Sharif Digital Repository

Reservoir lifetime optimization is an important issue. The policies that are used for maximum production using optimization methods become challenging in the presence of uncertainty. Robust Optimization (RO) method is a technique to deal with uncertainty. Because of insufficient data, uncertainty is an inherent characteristic of reservoir model. This leads to inexact solutions of an optimization problem. Also, design based on uncertainty in economic parameters, especially uncertain oil price is a challenging issue. Taking the uncertainty explicitly is a solution when there is no measurement available. To take into account uncertainty several possible values (realizations) for the uncertainty... 

About 20% of total oil in the world is reserved in fractured reservoirs and there is also more than 60% of remained oil in the world in these reservoirs. But increasing recovery factor and production from this type of reservoirs was not very successful. After water flooding process most of the oil remains in the reservoir. The amount of remained oil is much more specially in fractured reservoirs. Surfactant flooding in one of the well-known enhanced oil recovery methods for reduction of interfacial tension between fluids to decrease capillary forces that cause less oil trapping and higher oil recovery. But a comprehensive and accurate understanding of the mechanism of this process and... 

Among different enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods, low salinity waterflooding (LSWF) has been attractive to researchers because of its relative simplicity and lower environmental problems compared to other conventional EOR methods. Numerous researchers have attempted to find the main cause of the low salinity effect (LSE). According to previous studies, several experimental techniques have been proposed for predicting LSE and screening potential field candidates. However, there is a lack of a systematic investigation of all (or even some of) the methods to compare and determine their LSE predictive capability. Predictive capability development is essential because it saves costs and time... 

Based on numerous laboratory and field evidence, low-salinity waterflooding or engineered salinity waterflooding can lead to enhanced oil production. According to the literature, the mechanisms involved in this process can be divided into two general categories: fluid-fluid interactions and solid-liquid interactions. These mechanisms are caused by intermolecular and electrostatic forces at the rock and fluid interfaces. The most important controlling factor of the electrostatic forces is the concentration of ions at/near fluids-rock interface. Therefore, improving the concentration of ions causes a shift in wettability toward a more water-wetting state, eventually leading to increased oil... 

Water flooding is one of the improved oil recovery methods that has been used for past decades. The water flooding efficiency is calculated in two different scale; macroscopic scale and microscopic scale. The efficiency in macroscopic scale is called volume sweep efficiency (Ev) and in microscopic scale, displacement sweep efficiency (Ed). A special type of hydrocarbon reservoirs are composed of several permeable units in an impermeable shaley background in a way that hydrocarbon can just flow through the permeable units. The predominant feature of such reservoirs is continuity of permeable units that affecting the flow behavior. This simplification enables us to model such reservoirs by... 

It is about half century passed from the invention and application of the polymer flooding. Although there are successful reports from the using polymer flooding, but there are problems that in some cases this process fails. For more insight on the problems and in order to improve
the efficiency of this process the conceptual understanding of the process is required. More conceptual understanding from this process, requires investigation in pore scale. In the presenting investigation, the flow of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids in the single phase and two phase form and in pore scale are simulated using finite volume method. Because, the finite volume method is used in very... 

There are a lot of Fractured reservoirs around the world that have large portion of oil production. These reservoirs have complex structure and fractures have important role in production but the remaining oil in matrix causes that the oil recovery decreases. One of the most important factors in these reservois are wettability. Because most of the fractured reservoirs are oil wet and water injection process in these reservoirs are not effective and chemical EOR methods such as surfactant flooding method is used. Surfactant improve oil recovery by two reasons: 1- reduction of interfacial tension between oil and water . 2-Wettability alteration of matrix. The porpose of this project is... 

In this research oil production decline curve of heterogonous reservoirs was investigated. Heterogeneity is modeled by percolation theory and using Petrel software and mass balance equations are solved by Eclipse simulation software. In primary production stage which oil flows up the reservoir spontaneously by reservoir high internal pressure, decline curve is exponential. Changes in the characteristic parameter of the exponential decline curve with occupation probability and permeable objects size were investigated.In secondary production stage, after reducing the natural production potential of the reservoir, water injection is used to increase and stabilize the pressure and increase the... 

Recent experimental studies have demonstrated that the lowering of brine could alter the wettability of the oil-brine-rock systems from an oil-wetting state toward a more water-wetting state. This so-called “Low-salinity effect” (LSE) is one of the main effects of the enhanced oil recovery technology based on low-salinity waterflooding. “Double layer expansion” (DLE) in the thin brine film is proposed as the principal mechanism of this phenomenon. Nonetheless, the role of the electrical behavior of the oil/brine and rock/brine interfaces on the kinetics and dynamics of this process is not well understood. Moreover, since most of the previous works have either dealt with a thin film at... 

Low salinity water flooding (LSWF) is a relatively new EOR method in which low salinity or modified ionic composition water is injected into the reservoir to alter its wettability toward a more water-wettable state to accelerate oil recovery. Ease of field deployment and relatively low cost, as well as laboratory results confirming the positive effect of this method in improving the oil recovery factor, have made this technique attractive in the oil industry.Despite the many advantages of this method, overcoming the mixing between low and high salinity water which occurs due to a high mobility ratio between these two fluids is essential because it negatively affects the efficiency of LSWF.... 

High efficiency and low-emission fuel cells have the capacity to replace fossil fuels for energy supply concerns. Solid oxide fuel cells operate in relatively high temperature and have power plant applications. Hence, they are acquainted to be coupled with cycle gas turbine to reduce the cost and increase the overall system efficiency. The control of these hybrid systems is so important. Due to the system nonlinearity and having more than one controlled variable, its control with classic methods would be difficult. The model based predictive control is used as an alternative to mitigate these difficulties. In addition to their high performance, their extension to the multivariate case would... 

Surfactants are widely used in enhancing oil recovery. But application of worm-like micelles which seem to be a perfect candidate for enhancing heavy oil recovery have been less studied despite their significant ability in reducing interfacial tension and their high viscosity. This research consists of three parts. In the first part, the kinetic and equilibrium adsorption of surfactant on reservoir rock is experimentally investigated, and its appropriate kinetic and equilibrium adsorption model is specified. According to the adsorption models, the pseudo second order kintic coefficient of adsorption is proved to have a linear relationship with concentration, so its value at different... 

The major objectives of this study are to analytically and experimentally investigate the rheological behavior of polymers in the fractured carbonate medium based on the polymer solution properties and operational conditions. The intrinsic and apparent viscosity of high molecular weight-partially hydrolyzed poly (acrylamide) which is mainly used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes hasbeen investigated in reservoir conditions. Since, the EOR efficiency of hydrolyzed poly (acrylamide) is very sensitive to the temperature and salinity of petroleumreservoirs; investigations have been carried out at different possible reservoirtemperatures using high saline polymer solutions. The parameters... 

Inorganic scale deposition has been found to affect many industrial processes,including water injection into the oil reservoirs. Major formation damage because of incompatibility of high sulfate ion content of seawater with formation water containing calcium ion results in formation damage and production decline.In this study, several simultaneous techniques are utilized for qualitative and quantitative analysis of calcium sulfate scale to get more insight into the damage of formation during smart water flooding at micro and Nano scales. In the experimental section, calcium sulfate deposition due to the mixing of the formation water and seawater samples was investigated using the dynamic... 

One of the natural functions of wetlands is to neutralize the dangers caused by floods. Therefore, if a facility is built in the area of wetlands, it should not disturb their natural functioning. During the Iran-Iraq war, several antenna roads were built across the wetland, and the construction of these roads divided the wetland into 5 separate reservoirs. After the end of the war and with the development of the oil fields west of Karun (Hor al-Azim region), the extraction of oil from this region was put on the agenda. With the flood of April 2018, these facilities and roads were exposed to damage and flooding, and oil production from these reservoirs was stopped. In this research, after... 

Heavy oil reservoirs include a major part of the world’s oil reservoirs. Therefore consideration to their enhanced oil recovery (EOR) aspects has a great importance. In heavy oil reservoirs secondary and tertiary EOR methods, have an insignificant effect on oil recovery and so we’d better to use chemical methods to improve mobility and oil recovery. One of the appropriate EOR methods which has attracted a lot of attention is alkaline – surfactant – polymer (ASP) flooding which has a considerable impact on EOR from heavy oil reservoirs. In this EOR method, the low concentration of surfactant in the injecting fluid, results in a low or ultra-low interfacial tension (IFT) between residual oil... 

In oil industry, increment of drilling mud viscosity is of great importance. Water based polymers are widely use as drilling fluid to achieve this goal. Formation damages can be occurred by invading polymer solution into the formation in different ways such as scale and precipitation. These damages appear in different shapes such as reduction in relative permeability and productivity index reduction. In this study we have proposed, designed and fabricated a novel device, called sand pack, to measure the damage of the reservoir which enable us to calculate relative permeability and recovery factor by means of pressure difference and flow rate. Using this lab-scaled device we have measured... 

Water in oil emulsion usually forms during natural water encroachment or enhanced oil recovery processes due to the reaction between asphaltenic and naphthenic acid part of oil with brine in some heavy oil reservoirs. This results in major production challenges because of high w/o emulsion viscosity which leads to significant pressure drops. Therefore, it is essential to investigate the dominant mechanisms of w/o emulsion flow in porous media to overcome the production challenges. In the present study, w/o emulsion behavior is investigated through both static and dynamic tests. The w/o emulsion was prepared through mixing of a crude with brine using magnet stirrer. Emulsion stability... 

Nowadays, due to limitation of production from conventional oil reservoirs, enhanced recovery from heavy oil reservoirs are of great concern. In heavy oil reservoirs, only 5% of initial oil in place (IOIP) is producible due to high viscosity. Water flooding increases oil recovery just up to 10% which is due to improper mobility ratio. One of popular methods for increasing oil recovery is injection of chemical materials. Chemical methods are used in reservoirs that have high degree of heterogeneity like heterogeneous and layered reservoirs. These heterogeneities cause diversion and loss of injected water which leads to remaining of oil in its place. Using surface active agents, as a popular... 

Nitrogen injection is a promising enhanced oil recovery process. Asphaltene precipitation during miscible gas injection is a common problem in oilfields throughout the world. In this work, a comprehensive study is conducted on effect of gas injection on phase behavior and asphaltene instability of live oil samples. Effects of oil API, gas type and concentration, pressure and temperature are studied under natural depletion and nitrogen injection processes by means of high pressure filtration and a photographic procedure coupled with image analysis. Filtration results show that nitrogen destabilizes asphaltenes more compared to methane and the problem is more severe for heavier crude samples....