Abstract
About one-third of the crude oil is trapped inside the pores of the carbonate and sandstone after the primary and secondary oil recovery, various methods have been used for the flooding of the trapped crude oil. Due to the opaque nature of the sandstone and shale, the visualization of the fluid flow inside the porous structure conventionally involved the use of very sophisticated equipment like X-ray computed microtomography. In this approach, a low-cost method for the mimic of porous structure for the enhanced oil recovery is proposed using the polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)-based microfluidic devices with the laser ablated microstructures, where the microstructure is the replica of a real rock fracture. Since the PMMA is optically clear in the visible range, the detailed fluid flow inside the porous structure could be obtained for a better understanding of the liquid front propagation and rheology in the pore-scale. The effect of water flooding is also tested with the proposed microfluidic devices under various flooding rates for the demonstration of oil recovery enhancement with the proposed technology.
Highlights
During the process of crude oil production, after the geological survey and drilling of wells, the recovery of oil is usually classified as three stages: the primary, secondary and tertiary
The visualization of the water flooding process in the polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA)-based microfluidic devices is achieved in this study, which could mimic the porous sandstone
The microfluidic devices were fabricated using laser ablation based on the true slice image of sandstone and thermally bonded to seal the fabricated microstructure
Summary
During the process of crude oil production, after the geological survey and drilling of wells, the recovery of oil is usually classified as three stages: the primary, secondary and tertiary. The accumulated studies in microfluidics could provide sufficient technologies for the actuate replica of porous microstructures from sandstone or shales onto microfluidic chips with various polymer [19, 20], glass [21, 22], or silicon [23] materials with controlled surface properties [24, 25]. Various microfabrication methods have been used in the fabrication of microfluidic devices for EOR process study, including optical lithography, chemical etching, plasma etching and stereo lithography These fabrication methods usually involved a complicated fabrication procedures with highly sophisticated instruments, which formed a technical barrier for the researchers in energy fields to be benefit from microfluidics technology. In order to lower the barrier of visualization and cost in EOR process, the PMMA was chosen as the bulk material for the microfluidic devices with laser ablated microstructures to mimic the porous media inside the sand-. For the demonstration of the proposed technique, the PMMA-based microfluidic devices were fabricated, water flooding with various rates were performed with the fabricated microfluidic chips and the results were carefully analyzed
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