Sharif Digital Repository

A comprehensive understanding of the role of reservoir heterogeneities induced by flow barriers and connate water on sweep efficiency of different EOR scenarios is rarely attended in the available literature. In this work, different miscible/immiscible EOR processes were conducted on various one-quarter five-spot glass micromodels incorporating small-scale flow barriers. Microscopic and macroscopic observations revealed the reduction of sweep efficiency, premature breakthrough of displacing fluids, the severity of fingering at displacement front which leaves a large amount of oil behind the flow barriers untouched, and significant increasing trend of oil recovery after breakthrough in the... 

Generally, there are different enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. One of the most promising EOR method is the gas injection especially carbon dioxide (CO2) injection since it introduce several unique characteristic desired for higher tertiary oil recovery. In this study, the performance and feasibility of supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) and supercritical nitrogen (SC-N2) injection to enhanced oil recovery was investigated. In this regard, swelling tests and core flooding experiments were performed to find out whether the injections of these gases are efficient to recover trapped oil in the reservoir. Based on the experimental results, the possible active mechanisms were discussed on... 

Asphaltene precipitation and deposition within the reservoir formation is one of the main concerns during enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes especially during the gas injection. In the current study, different aspects of carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen (N2) injection in the reservoir, was thoroughly examined. The feasibility of using these gases as the injection gas was explored using Bayesian network-based screening method. After recombination and preparation of the live crude oil, precipitation of asphaltene using vanishing interfacial tension (VIT) method and core flooding experimentation was examined. Besides, swelling test was utilized to investigate the effect of CO2 and N2... 

CO2 injection has proved to be the most common and efficient enhanced oil recovery techniques which leads to more residual oil recovery. Unfavorable sweep efficiency which results in fingering propagation and causes early gas breakthrough is the most challenging issue of gas flooding process. The aim of this work is to study foam stability and analyze the mobility of CO2 foam stabilized by mixture of raw silica nanoparticles and ethyl hexadecyl dimethyl ammonium bromide (cationic surfactant). The result is obtained through both dynamic and static techniques using a new adsorption index.NPS-stabilized foams are generated using Ross-Miles method. A novel index for the adsorption of surfactant... 

The strength of a newly formulated surfactant with an alkali and polymer (AS/ASP) to improve an acidic heavy oil recovery was laboratory evaluated by various flooding experiments. The comparative role of the parameters like chemical nature, surface wettability, salinity, temperature and injection scheme were explored at high temperature and pressure on Berea sandstone rocks. According to the results the anionic surfactant is capable of providing proper oil displacement under high salinity conditions around 15 wt%. Continuous monitoring of differential pressure response and effluents’ state clearly represented the formation of an emulsified oil in high saline solutions with both alkali and... 

This investigation is conducted on one of the southern Iranian oil fields, which experiences a fault on its gas cap. Therefore, no traditional gas injection and normal water injection for pressure maintenance is suggested. The target is set to inject special compatible and proper type of chemicals in each single well to avoid the pressure increase for the risk of oil and gas spill. Two different sources of aqueous phases, namely formation brine and sea water were used to find the effects of different brine composition on the main mechanisms of releasing the trapped oil, interfacial tension (IFT) and wettability alteration. The obtained results reveal that both the ionic liquid (IL) based... 

The concerns for water availability, affordability and environmental consideration have motivated more research on the development of smart water injection for enhanced oil recovery process. Although wettability alteration has been considered as the dominant mechanism, there is an ample space in this area needs to be explored more. Therefore, a systematic series of experiments is designed and performed to examine the effect of salinity and ion type on the wettability of the carbonate rock surface to find the active mechanisms. For this purpose, the concentrations of different salts including NaCl, KCl, CaCl2 and MgCl2 are examined during 10 days of soaking for salts concentrations range of... 

A new polymer gel nanocomposite is fabricated for excess water production control (water shut off) in petroleum reservoirs and its rheological behavior is evaluated in the presence of sea water and formation water at the temperature of 100 °C. It is shown that at a high salinity without using SiO2 nanoparticles, the elastic modulus of synthesized polymer gel in the presence of sea water and formation water are 12.5 Pa and 9.8 Pa respectively. However by incorporation of SiO2 nanoparticles in the polymer gel matrix, the elastic modulus of synthesized polymer gel in the presence of sea water and formation water can be improved to 13.56 Pa and 11.57 Pa respectively, which is quite interesting... 

A basic understanding of the activities of indigenous surfactants of crude oil at the water/oil interface as a function of aqueous phase pH can give us a better insight into the alkaline enhanced oil recovery processes. The present study aimed to elucidate the effect of salinity and crude oil type, specifically the influence of resin and asphaltene molecules during alkaline flooding through interfacial tension (IFT) measurements via pendant drop and spinning techniques. Several model oils containing asphaltene and resin fractions were prepared and their IFTs were compared with those of the original crude oils. Moreover, the elemental analyses of asphaltene and resin fractions were performed,... 

In the recent years, declination of oil reservoir causes the importance of researches on enhancement of oil recovery processes become more important. One of wide applicable approaches in enhancement of oil recovery is carbon dioxide injection which becomes interested because of relative low cost, good displacement and environmentally aspects. The injection of carbon dioxide to oil reservoir causes the lighter hydrocarbons of crude oil are extracted by CO2. This phenomena can be affected by various factors such the solubility of hydrocarbons in carbon dioxide so in the present investigation Fuzzy c-means (FCM) as a novel approach for estimation of solubility of alkanes in carbon dioxide in... 

The potential of crude oil swelling is dominant mechanism in the development and implementation of carbonated water (CO2 saturated water) flooding as an environmental friendly enhanced oil recovery method. In this study, the volume of crude oil drop in carbonated water (CW) was measured at temperatures of 30, 50 and 80 °C and pressures of 500, 1000, 2000 and 4000 psi to investigate the swelling behavior of crude oil during CW flooding. In addition, the variations of dynamic and equilibrium Bond number of CW/crude oil due to dissolution of CO2 in the crude oil are compared to the crude oil/water systems. It is expected that crude oil swelling decreases as temperature increases due to a... 

Low salinity (LS) and smart water (SW) flooding processes which receive a great interest as cost-effective and environmental friendly techniques are relatively new enhanced oil recovery methods. Although shifting carbonate surfaces towards a water-wet state is the main mechanism behind these methods, effects of controlling factors (for instance: ion type or salinity) are already remained unsettled. In this regard, the effects of sulfate ion types (i.e. Na2SO4, MgSO4 and CaSO4) and their concentrations (i.e. 0–45,000 ppm) on wettability alteration are investigated using contact angle (CA) measurement technique. In addition, work of cohesion, work of adhesion and spreading coefficient of all... 

In the recent years due to increasing demand for energy and declination of reservoir production, an impressive notice on enhancement of oil recovery has been found. The gas injection especially carbon dioxide injection due to low cost and friendly environmentally of this approach the special attention to CO2 injection increased. The miscibility is known as key factor which effects on enhancement of recovery. The miscibility is controlled by interfacial tension of hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide so the importance of investigation of the interfacial tension becomes highlighted.in this investigation by using radial basis function (RBF) artificial neural network (ANN) as a novel approach the... 

A new polymer gel nanocomposite is fabricated for excess water production control (water shut off) in petroleum reservoirs and its rheological behavior is evaluated in the presence of sea water and formation water at the temperature of 100 °C. It is shown that at a high salinity without using SiO2 nanoparticles, the elastic modulus of synthesized polymer gel in the presence of sea water and formation water are 12.5 Pa and 9.8 Pa respectively. However by incorporation of SiO2 nanoparticles in the polymer gel matrix, the elastic modulus of synthesized polymer gel in the presence of sea water and formation water can be improved to 13.56 Pa and 11.57 Pa respectively, which is quite interesting... 

Utilization of nanoparticles in oil and gas industry has attracted considerable attention of engineers and researchers. In this article, the feasibility of nanoemulsion flooding is investigated as a method for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) through coreflooding experiments, using a packed bed and real reservoir fluids. Nine different mixtures of the solvent, surfactant, and nanoparticles in the form of a nanoemulsion phase are generated and used to recover the oil in the context of an EOR process. Various tests are conducted to determine the properties of porous medium and fluids. To study the production performance of this EOR technique, pressure drop across the packed bed are measured, along... 

One of the key open questions in the area of low or controlled salinity water flooding (LSWF or CSWF) is how the observed oil recovery at macro-scale (e.g. Darcy or core-scale) can the explained and what underlying microscopic mechanisms drive it. Thus far, the micromodel investigation of LSWF has been limited to sandstones, remaining challenging to apply to carbonates. In this paper we aim to i) extend the capability to fabricate a novel calcite micromodel using Iceland spar calcite crystal, ii) investigate the pore-scale mechanisms leading to oil recovery from carbonates. A target crude oil-brine-rock (COBR) system was first selected. To screen potential brines which can produce... 

The low salinity water injection has become one of the most important studies in the oil industry for improving oil recovery compared to conventional seawater injection. Thus, extensive studies have been conducted in carbonate and sandstone reservoirs to investigate how the physical properties of rocks and the chemical composition of fluids influence low salinity effect, while, the carbonate reservoir rocks requires more investigation of the effect of molecular and/or ionic interactions. In this experimental work, the effectiveness of various water flooding schemes in carbonate reservoir rock samples is investigated. In this regard, the oil recovery potential of seawater (SW), reservoir... 

In this paper, a novel method which has been proposed during the last decade for increasing of the permeability of porous media of petroleum reservoirs by transferring of energy via ultrasound waves is investigated numerically. Increasing of permeability of porous media of petroleum reservoirs results in enhancing of oil recovery. This technique is based on the idea of transferring of energy to the liquid filled porous media via the ultrasound waves and consequently producing of pulsating vapor bubbles. The generated vapor bubbles transfer the energy of ultrasound waves in the liquid filled passages of a porous medium through velocity and pressure fields in the liquid domain and in turn... 

Carbonated water has been recently proposed as an enhanced oil recovery method for crude oil reservoirs. Interfacial tension (IFT) plays a crucial rule on the displacement of trapped oil ganglia in the porous media. This investigation is designed to systematically assess the dynamic interfacial tension (DIFT) of two different types of crude oils with carbonated water (CW). In addition, the measured experimental data were applied into specified models. The DIFT behavior of acidic and non-acidic crude oil samples/CW and deionized water (DW) are also compared to find the effect of dissolved carbon dioxide in water on IFT. At the next stage, DIFT of all the results were used through three... 

The Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) process, a developed Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) process to recover oil and bitumen, has been studied theoretically and experimentally in conventional reservoirs and models and is found a promising EOR method for certain heavy oil reservoirs. In this work simulation studies of the SAGD process were made on different fractured models consisting of fractures in both Near Well Region (NWR) and Above Well Region (AWR) and even in the presence of networked fractures. At early stage of the SAGD process in fractured system, steam moves through the fractures first and then the matrix blocks are heated primarily by conduction and possibly some steam...