Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

In this research we aim to find enhance oil recovery mechanisms involved in nano-bio material injection by micro model apparatus which has not been studied before. Especially for injection in heavy oil and shaly porous media that forms most of heavy oil reservoirs. To this end, microscopic images from injection of nano-bio materials to shaly patterns have been taken and analyzed to find the process mechanism. Also amount of enhance oil recovery in different conditions like type of microbe forming bio material, nano-bio material concentration and type of flow pattern (shale characteristics including length, direction and distance from injection and production wells) will be studied.Three... 

Nowadays, application of ultrasonic wave technology as a novel method of enhancing oil recovery and also gas and oil well stimulation is prevailing. Not only this method is environment friendly, but also it is economic. Although the application of this method is proved to be of outstanding positive influences in field operations. In this study, it is intended to investigate the effect of ultrasonic waves on the rate and final recovery of miscible and immiscible injection of fluids as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods by using the Micro model apparatus and Although the effect of the waves on fluid flow through the porous media can be studied. The results of this work are a good guidance to... 

Because of a lot of water, gas and polymer injection processes in industry, two phase flow simulation is very useful. So performing experimental work to find out fluid flow behavior in a small scale of reservoir has special importance. The results in various scales will differ because of heterogeneity and different dominant flow regimes. To see this effects, comparison of two small scales, namely core and micromodel scales, has been studied using the scale up methods. In literature review, the scale up procedure, relative permeability methods and dimensionless numbers in two phase flows has been described. Here the relative permeability and oil... 

Nowadays, over seventy percent of buildings in the world are Structures which show a weak and often vulnerable behavior. Therefore, cognition and perception of the behavior of these types of structures are of important matters.Brick walls are the most important components of brick structures which have two in-plane and out-of-plane failure mode that are the common failure modes. Up to this point, lots of studies taking into account in-plane and out-of-plane behavior of brick walls individually have yet been carried out. However, the way these two modes could affect each other has not been studied effectively and there is no precise vision about this issue in the engineering society.... 

Foam injection for enhanced oil recovery is concerned by petroleum engineers because it decreases adverse effects of fingering and gravity segregation caused by the injected fluid .Obviously foam stability is an important factor in the efficiency of this process. So investigating it is an imperative. One of the ways that less studied and can improve foam stability is using of nanoparticles. In this project effect of nanoparticles on foam stability and displacement mechanism during foam flooding has been discussed.
Study consisted of two sets of experiments. In the first part, the static foam stability in the presence of silica nanoparticles has been investigated. Also influence of... 

Nanoparticles can be applied as chemical agent in enhnaced oil recovery like surfactants and polymers. One of nanoparticles usefull capabilities is modification of their surface. This research investigates this capabilty of nanoparticles in enhanced oil recovery. Surface modification of nanoparticles with both agents can bring new abilities to these materials. Here surface of silica nanoparticles is modified by hydrophilic agent comprising PEG groups, hydrophobic agent comprising propyl group and both agents. FT-IR tests showed that grafting of modifiyng agents on surface of nanoparticles is well done. To investigate effect of nanoparticles surface modification on nanoparticles capability in... 

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... 

In this work, a pore-scale analysis of nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL) flow, transport, dissolution, and mobilization in heterogeneous and homogeneous porous media was presented. First, dissolution processes and distribution of NAPL phase were investigated using micromodel experiments. The tests were conducted at different injection rates in NAPL-saturated porous media using distilled water, surfactant, and nanoparticles-assisted surfactant. Changes in residual NAPL volume and interfacial area were measured using image analysis method to calculate the mass transfer coefficient, k, and the lumped mass transfer rate coefficient, K. Based on the experimental results, empirical Sherwood... 

Excessive water production is one of the common problems during oil recovery that causes the production to decline, the operating cost to increase, and the well to shut in. The heterogeneities such as fractures in the reservoirs causes waterfingering and decrease waterflood efficiency, recovery factor and increase production costs and lead to high watercut. On of the methods used to prevent producing undesireable water from reservoirs is using Preformed Particle Gels (PPGs) that is known as plugging agent. These particles are injected into the hydrocarbon reservoirs and plugged the flow of water and prevent the production of water.In recent years, it has been recognized that the use of... 

Acidizing as the most frequent stimulation technique in the field, has been extensively used to increase the production rate. Even though acidizing treatments is well established, there is still an inherent risk for self-induced formation damage through incompatibilities of the fluids involved in this process.
A main potential problem during acidizing is the incompatibility of the acid and the reservoir’s crude oil. Acid interaction with crude oil can produce two major damage mechanisms that could offset partially, if not totally the benefit of the acid stimulation. These mechanisms are the rigid film emulsion formation and the acid-sludge precipitation, result in well productivity... 

Oil composition plays an undeniable role on the low salinity water flooding (LSWF) efficiency. This property directly affects the kinetics of wettability alteration through electrostatic interactions and interfacial tension (IFT). For instance, mixing in stagnant zones through a thin water film is considered as one of the most important diffusion controlled phenomenon which is goverened by Non-Fickian solute transport model. The major two potentials controlling the solute transport in thin film are salinity gradient and electrostatic potentials, which can be affected by oil composition and surface charges. This study aims to investigate the effect of oil composition on low salinity... 

Enhancing oil production from fractured reservoirs is challenging. The flow characteristics observed in naturally fractured reservoirs are complicated due to interaction between the two different flow domains: fracture and matrix. Spontaneous imbibition is one of the most important recovery processes in water-wet fractured reservoirs. Oil cannot be spontaneously produced from oil-wet rocks, unless the capillary pressure barrier between fracture conduits and matrix is overcome. The flow characteristics in fractured systems thus relate to the wettability of the rocks. Low salinity water injection has been widely studied as a method of enhancing oil recovery in recent years. However, its impact... 

Visual investigation of the low salinity water injection into micromodel is the goal of this research. Although many researches have been performed to realize the dominating mechanism behind the increased oil recovery after low salinity water injection, many contradictions exist among the studies. Mechanisms are generally divided into two classes. One class is due to fluid/fluid interactions and the other one is due to fluid/rock interactions. A comprehensive set of experiments are conducted in this study to find out the dominating mechanism behind low salinity water injection under the existing conditions of the experiments. Effect of different wettability condition and presence and absence... 

Various methods have been developed to improve the production capacity of hydrocarbon wells, one of the most successful method is hydraulic fracture. This method, despite improving well production and increasing production levels in a reservoir, causes secondary damages such as water blockage, which is a result of the leakage of fracturing fluid into the fracture matrix and the deformation of the reservoir. This damage can reduce the production rate of a well. Studies prior to this study have mainly examined the damages caused by the leakage of fracturing fluids on a core scale. In most of these studies, damages has been studied only by measuring the pressure and changes in the permeability... 

In order to investigate the effect of molecular-structural properties of asphaltene fraction on changes in wettability and flow of crude oil in the porous medium, four crude oil samples from oil fields in southern Iran were tested ;To know the characteristics of crude oil, molecular-structural properties of asphaltene fraction and the effect of asphaltene fraction on the wettability properties of surface, Experiments such as crude oil density and viscosity measurement, crude oil hydrocarbon analysis, asphaltene extraction with standard IP-143 method, elemental analysis and metal content, gel permeation chromatography, nuclear magnetic resonance, interaction between rock and asphaltene.... 

As fossil fuels are still the world's most important source of energy, as well as the maturity of most of the world's oil reservoirs, there is a need for enhanced oil recovery methods to meet the world's increasing oil demands. MEOR methods are new and promising methods that are still in the research and development stage. One of the MEOR methods is the use of biosurfactants, which increase the oil recovery by two mechanisms: 1) reducing the interfacial tension between water and oil and 2) changing the wettability of the rock. In this study, the performance of two glycolipid biosurfactants, rhamnolipid and sophorolipid, in increasing oil recovery has been investigated. Initially, surface... 

Gas injection is one of the most common methods to enhance oil recovery. But due to the low viscosity and density of gas, viscous fingering and gravity over ride usually happens which lead to reduction of gas injection performance to oil production. Foam injection is one of the techniques that has the potential to improve oil production by increasing. Foam apparent viscosity is higher than gas and its liquid which is made from it. So it can increase sweep efficiency and enhance oil recovery. However, presence of oil can destabilize foam. Beside, salinity has different effects on foamability and foam stability. Foam stability in high saline environment is a challenge. Therefore, the stability... 

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.... 

Formation damage is one of the most important challneges in hydrocarbon production; drilling mud invasion is one of its common types. This damage is caused by the penetration of the drilling fluid into the porous media, which its filtrate and solid pareticles block the pores and cause permeability reduction. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the pore-scale mechanisms of the formation damage induced by invert-emulsion drilling fluid and to investigate the effect of adding nanoparticles to the drilling fluid on the severity of the damage using microfluidic technique. According to the latest published articles, there has not been any research conducted at the pore-scale with...