Abstract
This work uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate the two-phase flow (oil and water) through a reservoir represented by a sandbox model. We investigated the influence in the flows of water having higher and lower mobilities than oil. To accomplish this, we also developed a dedicated solver, with the appropriated equations and representative models implemented in the open-source CFD OpenFOAM platform. In this solver, the black-oil model represented the oil. The results show that the Buckley–Leverett water-flood equation is a good approach for the three-dimensional flow. We observe that the water wall front is mixed to some extent with the oil and evolves obeying an exponential law. Water with mobility lower than oil is not common. However, in this case, the oil recovery is improved and the amount of injected water is reduced. The results comparing different mobilities show that a careful economic assessment should be performed before the field development. We have shown that the low water mobility can increase, as in this studied example, the water front saturation from 0.57 to 0.73, giving a substantial improvement in the oil recovery. The reservoir simulation can provide all process information needed to perform an economical assessment in an oil field exploration.
Highlights
Because of the high investment required in the discovery of new reserves and the costs involved in the exploration, prediction tools became very important for the oil industry
This work uses Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to simulate the two-phase flow through a reservoir represented by a sandbox model
We developed a dedicated solver, with the appropriated equations and representative models implemented in the open-source CFD OpenFOAM platform
Summary
Because of the high investment required in the discovery of new reserves and the costs involved in the exploration, prediction tools became very important for the oil industry. The increasing advance in high-performance computing permitted Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to obtain numerical solutions of the equations that model the different systems in an acceptable time interval, highlighting computer simulations as one of these tools. Enhanced oil recovery aiming to remove the oil still in place by changing the mobility ratio between water and oil has been pursued as a response to economic demands. Many of these efforts were dedicated to how to improve the oil secondary recovery in what is called Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (CEOR)..
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