Experimental Study on Enhancing Heavy Oil Recovery by Multimedia-Assisted Steam Flooding Process

Abstract

Aiming to reduce the negative effect of steam channeling in the late stage of steam flooding applied in heavy oil reservoirs, experimental studies were carried out on selective plugging of solid particles, added to single-medium- and multimedia-assisted steam flooding. This work also explored the mechanisms of enhancing heavy oil recovery by applying plugging agent- and multimedia-assisted steam flooding and its optimized injection parameters. Through solid particle plugging experiments, this study clarifies the high-efficiency solid particle plugging mechanism, with an optimized slug size of 0.40 PV and plugging ratio of over 98%. Through single-medium- and multimedia-assisted steam flooding experiments, this study confirms that gas-assisted steam flooding has an effect of synergistic oil displacement and that a CO2 with urea solution-assisted steam flooding method achieves the best production performance. Its oil recovery factor is 10.7% higher than that of the steam flooding process. Parallel sand pack models with a permeability difference of more than 10 times were used to mimic a heavy oil reservoir with high-permeability channels, and the selective plugging of solid particles was carried out. The plugging ratio of high-permeability formation reached 91.20%, playing an effective plugging role. Solid particle plugging is less effective to the low-permeability formation, with the plugging ratio at only 32.39%. Based on the selective plugging of solid particles, a plugging agent- and multimedia-assisted steam flooding experiment was conducted, the high-permeability formation was effectively plugged, and the swept volume of the low-permeability formation increased significantly. The final recovery factor of the high-permeability formation was enhanced by 11%, and the recovery factor of the low-permeability formation increased by 3 times, reaching 36.38%. Therefore, solid particle plugging effectively alleviates the impact of high-permeability formation caused by permeability difference during steam flooding.