Water flooding optimization with adjoint model under control constraints

Abstract

The oil recovery enhancement is a major technical issue in the development of oil and gas fields. The smart oil field is an effective way to deal with the issue. It can achieve the maximum profits in the oil production at a minimum cost, and represents the future direction of oil fields. This paper discusses the core of the smart field theory, mainly the real-time optimization method of the injection-production rate of water-oil wells in a complex oil-gas filtration system. Computing speed is considered as the primary prerequisite because this research depends very much on reservoir numerical simulations and each simulation may take several hours or even days. An adjoint gradient method of the maximum theory is chosen for the solution of the optimal control variables. Conventional solving method of the maximum principle requires two solutions of time series: the forward reservoir simulation and the backward adjoint gradient calculation. In this paper, the two processes are combined together and a fully implicit reservoir simulator is developed. The matrixes of the adjoint equation are directly obtained from the fully implicit reservoir simulation, which accelerates the optimization solution and enhances the efficiency of the solving model. Meanwhile, a gradient projection algorithm combined with the maximum theory is used to constrain the parameters in the oil field development, which make it possible for the method to be applied to the water flooding optimization in a real oil field. The above theory is tested in several reservoir cases and it is shown that a better development effect of the oil field can be achieved.