Speaker
Description
Conventional primary and secondary recovery methods typically extract only 30–50% of the original oil in place, leaving substantial volumes trapped due to capillary forces at the pore scale and poor sweep efficiency at the reservoir scale. To mitigate these limitations, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) strategies based on emulsion flooding have been investigated, as they offer the potential to improve both microscopic displacement efficiency and macroscopic sweep.
Among these strategies, Water-Alternate-Emulsion (WAE) flooding has emerged as a promising approach, in which an oil-in-water emulsion is injected between water slugs following a W–E–W sequence. The presence of emulsion droplets within the porous network promotes flow diversion by partially blocking preferential flow paths, thereby redirecting the injected water toward previously unswept regions. This mechanism can enhance sweep efficiency while maintaining relatively low bulk viscosity and minimizing formation damage, making WAE an attractive and potentially cost-effective EOR method.
In this study, the behavior of WAE flooding was investigated through a combined core-scale and pore-scale experimental approach. Core flooding experiments were performed in Bentheimer sandstone, while pore-scale dynamics were studied using PDMS/glass micromodels designed to reproduce the rock’s pore structure with internal variations in porosity. Oil recovery in the micromodels was quantitatively assessed through image analysis of time-resolved optical microscopy data acquired during the experiments. The effects of emulsion droplet size, emulsion concentration, and injection protocol on flow behavior and oil displacement were evaluated.
The combined analysis provides insights into the mechanisms governing emulsion transport, flow diversion, and oil displacement in porous media, and suggests the existence of a porosity range in which WAE flooding is particularly effective for enhancing oil recovery.
We thank PRIO and ANP for the financial support through the PD&I clause 918/2023.
| Country | Brazil |
|---|---|
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