Abstract

Chemical-based enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques utilize the injection of chemicals, such as solutions of polymers, alkali, and surfactants, into oil reservoirs for incremental recovery. The injection of a polymer increases the viscosity of the injected fluid and alters the water-to-oil mobility ratio which in turn improves the volumetric sweep efficiency. This research study aims to investigate strategies that would help intensify oil recovery with the polymer solution injection. For that purpose, we utilize a lab-scale, cylindrical heavy oil reservoir model. Furthermore, a dynamic mathematical black oil model is developed based on cylindrical physical model of homogeneous porous medium. The experiments are carried out by injecting classic and novel partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide solutions (concentration: 0.1-0.5 wt %) with 1 wt % brine into the reservoir at pressures in the range, 1.03-3.44 MPa for enhanced oil recovery. The concentration of the polymer solution remains constant throughout the core flooding experiment and is varied for other subsequent experimental setup. Periodic pressure variations between 2.41 and 3.44 MPa during injection are found to increase the heavy oil recovery by 80% original-oil-in-place (OOIP). This improvement is approximately 100% more than that with constant pressure injection at the maximum pressure of 3.44 MPa. The experimental oil recoveries are in fair agreement with the model calculated oil production with a RMS% error in the range of 5-10% at a maximum constant pressure of 3.44 MPa.

Highlights

  • The focus of this chapter is to provide the background information on heavy oil as a global energy need

  • The final time standard deviation from the repeated experiments were found to be in the range of ±0.124-0.275 % original oil in place (OOIP) with different polymer concentration solutions

  • We carried out experiments with different concentration polymer solutions (0.1-0.5 wt %) at a constant pressure of 1.03 MPa

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Summary

Introduction

The focus of this chapter is to provide the background information on heavy oil as a global energy need. 1.1 Heavy Oil. The world’s current primary energy source is petroleum. Heavy oil is essentially a type of crude oil that has a higher density and specific gravity than that of conventional light crude oil (Ancheyta, Jorge, 2016). They have high resistances to flow and have heavy molecular compositions. According to World Petroleum Congress heavy oils generally, have specific gravity less than 22.3° API. Bitumen is categorized as the heaviest and thickest form of petroleum It is known as extra heavy crude oil due to these characteristics

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