Sharif Digital Repository

Development of reliable and accurate models to estimate carbon dioxide–brine interfacial tension (IFT) is necessary, since its experimental measurement is time-consuming and requires expensive experimental apparatus as well as complicated interpretation procedure. In the current study, feed forward artificial neural network is used for estimation of CO2–brine IFT based on data from published literature which consists of a number of carbon dioxide–brine interfacial tension data covering broad ranges of temperature, total salinity, mole fractions of impure components and pressure. Trial-and-error method is utilized to optimize the artificial neural network topology in order to enhance its... 

Recently, wettability alteration has been much attended by researchers for studying well productivity improvement in gas condensate reservoirs. Previous studies in this area only utilized water/alcohol based chemicals for this purpose. While, hydrocarbon nature of the blocked condensate in retrograde gas reservoirs, may motivate application of hydrocarbon based chemical agents. In this study, a new hydrocarbon based wettability modifier is introduced to alter wettability of carbonate and sandstone rocks to preferentially gas wetting condition. Static and dynamic contact angle measurements, spontaneous imbibition and core flooding tests were conducted to investigate the effect of proposed... 

There is currently a significant focus on using boundary layer control (BLC) approach for controlling the flow around bodies, especially the foil sections. In marine engineering this is done with the hope of increasing the lift - to - drag ratio and efficiency of the hydrofoils. In this paper, effects of the method on hydrodynamic characteristics and tip vortex formation of a hydrofoil are studied. Steady water injection at the tip of the hydrofoil is simulated in different conditions by using ANSYS-CFX commercial software. Validity of the proposed simulations is verified by comparing the obtained results against available experimental data. Effects of the injection on the lift, drag, and... 

Spontaneous imbibition is well-known to be one of the most effective processes of oil recovery in fractured reservoirs. However, the detailed pore-scale mechanisms of the counter-current imbibition process and the effects of different fluid/rock parameters on this phenomenon have not yet been deeply addressed. Thiswork presents the results of a newpore-level numerical study of counter-current spontaneous imbibition, using coupled Cahn-Hilliard phase field and Navier-Stokes equations, solved by a finite element method. A 2D fractured medium was constructed consisting of a nonhomogeneous porous matrix, in which the grains were represented by an equilateral triangular array of circles with... 

Changing the wettability of reservoir rock towards strongly water-wet state is effective way to enhance oil recovery from fractured carbonate reservoirs which are typically oil-wet. Regarding this fact, the injection of surfactant and the bacterial solution as EOR agents is proposed in the current work as a potential method to alter the wettability of rock surface reservoir. Nevertheless, there is a definite lack of experimental data regarding this method and the synergistic effect of both chemical and bacterial solutions on this process. In this study, the sole and combined effects of the bacterial solution using an Enterobacter cloacae strain as a biosurfactant-producer are compared with... 

The wetting condition of the reservoir rock is the key to the success of any EOR technique and the ultimate oil recovery. Wettability is dictated by the surface chemistry related to the interactions between the fluids and the rock surface which determines the stability of the water film between the rock and the oil phase. Streaming potential measurement is one of the electrokinetic techniques used to determine the average zeta potential of porous rock which can provide reliable information on fluid-rock interaction and wettability state of the rock surface. Streaming potential measurement has recently been introduced in the oil reservoirs applications and there are still significant... 

Although several investigations have studied the low-salinity water injection (LSWI) performance during the past decades, the effect of crude oil type on the interfacial tension (IFT) and wettability alteration is still in dark. In this regard, this study is aimed to obtain the thermodynamic energies including adhesion, cohesion and spreading coefficient during LSWI. To achieve this goal, IFT and static contact angle values of three different crude oils (i.e. light, medium and heavy) are measured as a function of sea water salinity. The obtained results revealed that the dilution of sea water can change the wettability of reservoir rock from oil wet state towards water wet state, while crude... 

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 this work, coupled Cahn–Hilliard phase field and Navier–Stokes equations were solved using finite element method to address the effects of micro-fracture and its characterizations on water-oil displacements in a heterogeneous porous medium. Sensitivity studies at a wide range of viscosity ratios (M) and capillary numbers (Ca), and the resultant log Ca–log M stability phase diagram, revealed that in both media, with/without fracture, the three regimes of viscous fingering, capillary fingering and stable displacement similarly occur. However, presence of the fracture caused water channeling phenomenon which resulted in reduction of the number of active fingers and hence the final oil... 

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... 

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... 

Sustainable technologies are the main concerns of the 21st century modified oilfield industries. The insufficiency of conventional drilling fluid formulations with a combination of hardly degradable hazardous chemicals as additives raise the demands of field-applicable innovative and environmentally friendly methods. Pistachio Shell discards as degradable wastes, which can intellectually apply in drilling fluid formulation. The experimental oilfield investigations of utilizing pistachio shell powder prove the significant enhancement of rheological properties, reduction of fluid loss and mud cake thickness in both API (Low Pressure —Low Temperature) and High Pressure—High Temperature (HPHT)... 

By displacing oil in porous media with other fluid, different mechanisms of fluid displacing occur. The importance of understanding the trapping mechanisms like pore body filling is irrefutable. Pore body filling mechanism with a coordination number of four has different events like I0, I1, I2 and I3. Previous studies showed that the event of I0 occurs when the pore is only filled by a compressible non-wetting phase, but this study showed that this event could also occur by an incompressible non-wetting phase. Trapping mechanisms can be examined in a glass micro-model. In this research, a glass micro-model with three different patterns was used. Results showed that at two spots of the... 

Nitrogen has emerged as a suitable alternative to carbon dioxide for injection into hydrocarbon reservoirs worldwide to enhance the recovery of subsurface energy. Nitrogen typically costs less than CO2 and natural gas, and has the added benefit of being widely available and non-corrosive. However, the underlying mechanisms of recovery following N2 injection into fractured reservoirs that make up a large portion of the world's oil and gas reserves are not well understood. Here we present the laboratory results of N2 injection into carbonate rocks acquired from a newly developed oil reservoir in Iran with a huge N2-containing natural gas reservoir nearby. We investigate the effectiveness of N2... 

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... 

Carbonated water injection (CWI) is known as an efficient technique for both CO2 storage and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). During CWI process, CO2 moves from the water phase into the oil phase and results in oil swelling. This mechanism is considered as a reason for EOR. Viscous fingering leading to early breakthrough and leaving a large proportion of reservoir un-swept is known as an unfavorable phenomenon during flooding trials. Generally, instability at the interface due to disturbances in porous medium promotes viscous fingering phenomenon. Connate water makes viscous fingers longer and more irregular consisting of large number of tributaries leading to the ultimate oil recovery... 

The present study aims at monitoring the bulk and bubble-scale behaviour of anionic polyacrylamide-sodium dodecyl sulphate stabilized foam in the absence and presence of oil. Dynamic stability tests provided results indicating that polymer increases the foam dynamic stability and decreases the drainage. Oil slows down the drainage rate of polymer-surfactant foam. In the absence of oil, foam is drained gradually/smoothly whereas remarkable fluctuations are evident in drainage graphs when oil is present. The Hele-Shaw cell was employed to conduct bubble-scale as well as statistical analyses on how foam texture is influenced by a polymer-surfactant system and hydrocarbon. Bubble-scale analyses,... 

Capillary imbibition is an important recovery mechanism in naturally fractured reservoirs when water-filled fractures surround water-wet matrix blocks. A large amount of studies of imbibition process is simply total or partial immersion of nonwetting phase saturated rock in aqueous wetting phase. However, water advance in fractures during water flooding or water encroachment from an active aquifer introduces time dependent boundary conditions where invariant exposure of rock surface to water is not representative. In this work, a laboratory simulated matrix-fracture system was used to investigate different aspects of imbibition in the presence of fracture fluid flow (namely dynamic... 

Emulsion flooding is a promising method for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The static and dynamic behavior of the emulsions is greatly influenced by the nature of the applied surfactant. In this work, the effect of fatty acids, as natural surface-active agents, and their chain length on the emulsion behavior was investigated in both bulk and porous media. A panel of the fatty acids with different chain lengths (6 < C < 18) was applied at constant concentration and pH. Upon the static stability tests, emulsion stability at the optimum value of chain length (C14) was increased by two orders of magnitude. Under the optimal condition, the hydrogen bonding between dissociated and undissociated... 

By reducing the exploration of new oil reservoirs, enhanced oil recovery from previous oil reservoirs is a solution to supply energy demand. In order to develop the production, various technologies and methods have been proposed such as steaming, direct heating, flooding by nano-fluid, chemical injection, polymer injection and etc. In the present study, nanofluid flooding has been attempted on a rock reservoir with incomplete cone geometry and its performance has been evaluated on oil recovery. The porous media is considered heterogeneous in simulation in accordance with oil reservoirs. The heterogeneous geometry considered in this study is incomplete cone that is heterogeneous in a random...