Research for reducing the Minimum Miscible Pressure of crude oil and carbon dioxide by injecting citric acid isobutyl ester

Abstract

Carbon dioxide miscible flooding has become one of the important technologies for improving oil recovery. The Minimum Miscible Pressure (MMP) is the key parameter to realize miscible flooding. As the MMP in the research area is higher than the formation fracture pressure, miscible flooding cannot be formed. To address this problem, it is necessary to find a way to reduce the MMP. Citric acid isobutyl ester is chosen to reduce the MMP of carbon dioxide and crude oil in this research. The effect of citric acid isobutyl ester on reducing the MMP was measured by the method of long-slim-tube displacement experiment. The experiment results show that the MMP is 29.6 MPa and can be obviously reduced by injecting the slug of citric acid isobutyl ester. The MMP could decrease gradually with constantly adding the injected slug of citric acid isobutyl ester, but the decrease becomes smaller and smaller. The optimum injected slug size of the chemical reagent is 0.003 PV. Under the condition of the slug size, the MMP is reduced to 23.5 MPa and the reduction is 6.1 MPa.