Abstract
Microemulsion flooding is one of the most effective methods of Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (CEOR), particularly for the production of residual oil trapped in unconventional reservoirs. A critical step for successful application of this technique is to achieve a suitable formulation. Previous studies have almost focused on the technical aspects while considering both practical and economic matters as conflicting objectives has been neglected. In the present paper, the formulation of microemulsion is optimized based on the trade-off between scientific and financial responses using a hybrid workflow in which experimental design and artificial intelligence methodologies are composed. To appraise the efficiency of developed algorithm, a challenge case study is first evaluated and compared to previous approaches. Thereafter, the second case is examined in which a newly developed formulation of microemulsion for high temperature carbonate reservoirs is optimized. The outcomes of this multi-attribute workflow are compared to a single-objective algorithm. The results indicate the outstanding performance of the proposed approach for multi-objective optimization of microemulsion formulation. Eventually, the possible concerns regarding the application of microemulsion flooding in unconventional reservoirs are discussed.
Highlights
An immense amount of oil is remained unrecovered in the reservoirs after primary and secondary mechanisms of oil recovery
Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was used to model the production of triglyceride microemulsion, performing as a numerical simulator to provide the responses of D-optimal design
ANN was not trained for Interfacial Tension (IFT) very well the results were acceptable for Recovery Factor (RF)
Summary
An immense amount of oil is remained unrecovered in the reservoirs after primary and secondary mechanisms of oil recovery. It exceeds more than half of the Original Oil in Place (OOIP) in almost cases [1, 2] This considerable potential is of great interest for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods which fall into three main categories: thermal, gas and chemical methods. Microemulsion flooding is one of the high-performance techniques of Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (CEOR) methods. A workflow for multi-attribute optimization was successfully proposed in two case studies of microemulsion flooding The application of this efficient methodology would be extended beyond different cases of CEOR or even other EOR techniques if sufficient data can be gathered
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