A network model for the biofilm growth in porous media and its effects on permeability and porosity

Luis A Lopez-Peña,Fred Vermolen,Bernard Meulenbroek

doi:10.1007/s00791-019-00316-y

Luis A Lopez-Peña, Fred Vermolen + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00791-019-00316-y

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Abstract

Successful microbial enhanced oil recovery depends on several factors like reservoir characteristics and microbial activity. In this work, a pore network is used to study the hydrodynamic evolution over time as a result of the development of a biofilm in the pores. A new microscopic model is proposed for biofilm growth which takes into account that nutrients might not fully penetrate the biofilm. An important novelty in this model is that acknowledges the continuous spreading of the biofilm over the network. The results from the current study can be used to obtain a new relation between the porosity and permeability which might be used as an alternative to the Kozeny Carman relation.

Highlights

The production of oil from the reservoir is initially accomplished by the internal pressure of the reservoir
F (Vbfi j ) ≥ 0 is the positive part of a sigmoid function for Vbfij that depends on the penetration volume Vp, k1 is the specific biofilm growth rate, Aiwbf is the internal interface water biofilm area, AiT is the external area of the tube, Ci j is the concentration of nutrients within the tube and
We develop a new model for biofilm growth, which predicts that the nutrients are not able to penetrate fully in the biofilm if the reaction term is dominant over the diffusion of nutrients within the biofilm

Summary

Introduction

The production of oil from the reservoir is initially accomplished by the internal pressure of the reservoir. When the primary production declines some external forces have to be applied, waterflooding or gas injection techniques are implemented to extract oil from the reservoir. These injection schemes are called the secondary oil recovery production. One of the tertiary (or enhanced) oil recovery techniques is the microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) which uses the growth of bacteria and the resulting by-products in order to increase the oil production. Microbial growth may enhance oil displacement by increasing the efficiency of the waterflooding process, by reducing interfacial tension and by changing the rock wettability [1,14].

B Fred Vermolen

Mathematical model

Numerical method

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