Abstract
Carbon dioxide (CO2) flooding is a complicated process as it involves phase behavior. The objective of this work was to understand the mass transfer mechanisms during flooding with CO2 and CO2/C1/C3 (CO2/HC) based on experimental and simulated composition changes. Three model oil compositions were used (n-C10, n-C10/C1, and n-C10/C1/C3). For a comparison, crude oil from a North Sea field was included. The second part of the investigation was to compare the effect of the combined light components (C1/C3) with CO2 as a displacing fluid on enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Equation of State EOS SRK–Peneloux was used for the simulations to predict composition changes. The highest recovery was obtained from model oil (n-C10) displaced with CO2 compared to model oil containing light components with the highest recovery recorded from model oil/C1 (live oil A) compared to model oil/C1/C3 at all of the tested temperatures. The presence of light components (C1/C3) in the injected CO2 at miscible conditions increased the oil recovery for crude oil compared to flooding only with CO2. Transverse dispersion of CO2 helps in eliminating/reducing the effect of viscous instabilities by shortening fingering travel/widening the fingers. The collected samples contained water, although the flooding was done on dry sandstone cores. Possible mechanisms are discussed in a later section.
Highlights
Most of the mature fields are approaching tail production/declining phase
Flooding was was performed performed on on the the sandstone sandstonecores coressaturated saturatedwith withthe thesynthetic syntheticlive live(n-C10/C1/C3)
The highest recovery was obtained with model oil (n-C10)
Summary
Most of the mature fields are approaching tail production/declining phase. This decline has inclined researchers towards opting for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). When the EOR method was introduced, immiscible flooding was under discussion as an alternative water-based EOR process. Ferguson et al [4] and Hamouda and Pranoto [5] took the advantage of the CO2 water dissolution trapping and showed that instead of following one regime for the whole injection period, using different regimes could enhance the storage capacity, eliminate the limitation associated with the initial water in the storage site, and enhance the oil recovery. Hamouda and Pranoto [6] addressed the synergy between CO2 and low-salinity water. Hamouda and Tabrizy [9] investigated the effect
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