Abstract
In this work, an experimental study combined with numerical simulation was conducted to investigate the potential of chemically enhanced water alternating gas (CWAG) injection as a new enhanced oil recovery method. The unique feature of this new method is that it uses alkaline, surfactant, and polymer additives as a chemical slug which is injected during the water alternating gas (WAG) process to reduce the interfacial tension (IFT) and simultaneously improve the mobility ratio. In essence, the proposed CWAG process involves a combination of chemical flooding and immiscible carbon dioxide (CO2) injection and helps in IFT reduction, water blocking reduction, mobility control, oil swelling, and oil viscosity reduction due to CO2 dissolution. Its performance was compared with the conventional immiscible water alternating gas (I-WAG) flooding. Oil recovery utilizing CWAG was better by 26 % of the remaining oil in place after waterflooding compared to the recovery using WAG conducted under similar conditions. The coreflood data (cumulative oil and water production) were history matched via a commercial simulator by adjusting the relative permeability curves and assigning the values of the rock and fluid properties such as porosity, permeability, and the experimentally determined IFT data. History matching of the coreflood model helped us optimize the experiments and was useful in determining the importance of the parameters influencing sweep efficiency in the CWAG process. The effectiveness of the CWAG process in providing enhancement of displacement efficiency is evident in the oil recovery and pressure response observed in the coreflood. The results of sensitivity analysis on CWAG slug patterns show that the alkaline–surfactant–polymer injection is more beneficial after CO2 slug injection due to oil swelling and viscosity reduction. The CO2 slug size analysis shows that there is an optimum CO2 slug size, around 25 % pore volume which leads to a maximum oil recovery in the CWAG process. This study shows that the ultralow IFT system, i.e., IFT equaling 10−2 or 10−3 mN/m, is a very important parameter in CWAG process since the water blocking effect can be minimized.
Highlights
The immiscible CO2 flooding process holds promise for incremental recovery from reservoirs with low to moderate pressures, where it is difficult to attain the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) of the reservoir fluid
The unique feature of this new method is that it uses alkaline, surfactant, and polymer additives as a chemical slug which is injected during the water alternating gas (WAG) process to reduce the interfacial tension (IFT) and simultaneously improve the mobility ratio
This study shows that the ultralow IFT system, i.e., IFT equaling 10-2 or 10-3 mN/ m, is a very important parameter in chemically enhanced water alternating gas (CWAG) process since the water blocking effect can be minimized
Summary
The immiscible CO2 flooding process holds promise for incremental recovery from reservoirs with low to moderate pressures, where it is difficult to attain the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) of the reservoir fluid. Caudle and Dyes (1958) noticed that the sweep efficiency of a gas injection process can be increased by decreasing the mobility behind the flooding front. This is achieved by injecting a water slug along with the gas slug. The water slug can reduce the relative permeability to gas and lower the total mobility. In their proposed method, a miscible slug is driven by a simultaneous injection of water and gas in a proper ratio. To avoid injectivity problems and other operational limitations related to the simultaneous fluid injection, an injection scheme involving the alternate injection of gas and water, water alternating gas (WAG), is used
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