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Immiscible Viscous Fingering: The Simulation of Tertiary Polymer Displacements of Viscous Oils in 2D Slab Floods
Immiscible viscous fingering in porous media occurs when a high viscosity fluid is displaced by an immiscible low viscosity fluid. This paper extends a recent development in the modelling of immiscible viscous fingering to directly simulate experimental floods where the viscosity of the aqueous disp...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9572278/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36236106 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym14194159 |
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author | Beteta, Alan Sorbie, Ken S. Skauge, Arne |
author_facet | Beteta, Alan Sorbie, Ken S. Skauge, Arne |
author_sort | Beteta, Alan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Immiscible viscous fingering in porous media occurs when a high viscosity fluid is displaced by an immiscible low viscosity fluid. This paper extends a recent development in the modelling of immiscible viscous fingering to directly simulate experimental floods where the viscosity of the aqueous displacing fluid was increased (by the addition of aqueous polymer) after a period of low viscosity water injection. This is referred to as tertiary polymer flooding, and the objective of this process is to increase the displacement of oil from the system. Experimental results from the literature showed the very surprising observation that the tertiary injection of a modest polymer viscosity could give astonishingly high incremental oil recoveries (IR) of ≥100% even for viscous oils of 7000 mPa.s. This work seeks to both explain and predict these results using recent modelling developments. For the 4 cases (µ(o)/µ(w) of 474 to 7000) simulated in this paper, finger patterns are in line with those observed using X-ray imaging of the sandstone slab floods. In particular, the formation of an oil bank on tertiary polymer injection is very well reproduced and the incremental oil response and water cut drops induced by the polymer are very well predicted. The simulations strongly support our earlier claim that this increase in incremental oil displacement cannot be explained solely by a viscous “extended Buckley-Leverett” (BL) linear displacement effect; referred to in the literature simply as “mobility control”. This large response is the combination of this effect (BL) along with a viscous crossflow (VX) mechanism, with the latter VX effect being the major contributor to the recovery mechanism. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9572278 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-95722782022-10-17 Immiscible Viscous Fingering: The Simulation of Tertiary Polymer Displacements of Viscous Oils in 2D Slab Floods Beteta, Alan Sorbie, Ken S. Skauge, Arne Polymers (Basel) Article Immiscible viscous fingering in porous media occurs when a high viscosity fluid is displaced by an immiscible low viscosity fluid. This paper extends a recent development in the modelling of immiscible viscous fingering to directly simulate experimental floods where the viscosity of the aqueous displacing fluid was increased (by the addition of aqueous polymer) after a period of low viscosity water injection. This is referred to as tertiary polymer flooding, and the objective of this process is to increase the displacement of oil from the system. Experimental results from the literature showed the very surprising observation that the tertiary injection of a modest polymer viscosity could give astonishingly high incremental oil recoveries (IR) of ≥100% even for viscous oils of 7000 mPa.s. This work seeks to both explain and predict these results using recent modelling developments. For the 4 cases (µ(o)/µ(w) of 474 to 7000) simulated in this paper, finger patterns are in line with those observed using X-ray imaging of the sandstone slab floods. In particular, the formation of an oil bank on tertiary polymer injection is very well reproduced and the incremental oil response and water cut drops induced by the polymer are very well predicted. The simulations strongly support our earlier claim that this increase in incremental oil displacement cannot be explained solely by a viscous “extended Buckley-Leverett” (BL) linear displacement effect; referred to in the literature simply as “mobility control”. This large response is the combination of this effect (BL) along with a viscous crossflow (VX) mechanism, with the latter VX effect being the major contributor to the recovery mechanism. MDPI 2022-10-04 /pmc/articles/PMC9572278/ /pubmed/36236106 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym14194159 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Beteta, Alan Sorbie, Ken S. Skauge, Arne Immiscible Viscous Fingering: The Simulation of Tertiary Polymer Displacements of Viscous Oils in 2D Slab Floods |
title | Immiscible Viscous Fingering: The Simulation of Tertiary Polymer Displacements of Viscous Oils in 2D Slab Floods |
title_full | Immiscible Viscous Fingering: The Simulation of Tertiary Polymer Displacements of Viscous Oils in 2D Slab Floods |
title_fullStr | Immiscible Viscous Fingering: The Simulation of Tertiary Polymer Displacements of Viscous Oils in 2D Slab Floods |
title_full_unstemmed | Immiscible Viscous Fingering: The Simulation of Tertiary Polymer Displacements of Viscous Oils in 2D Slab Floods |
title_short | Immiscible Viscous Fingering: The Simulation of Tertiary Polymer Displacements of Viscous Oils in 2D Slab Floods |
title_sort | immiscible viscous fingering: the simulation of tertiary polymer displacements of viscous oils in 2d slab floods |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9572278/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36236106 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym14194159 |
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