1 research outputs found
Effects of Core Size and Surfactant Choice on Fluid Saturation Development in Surfactant/Polymer Corefloods
Surfactant/polymer
flooding allows for a significant increase in
oil recovered at both laboratory and field scales. Limitations in
application at the reservoir scale are, however, present and can be
associated with both the complexity of the underlying displacement
process and the time-intensive nature of the up-scaling workflow.
Pivotal to this workflow are corefloods which serve to both validate
the extent of oil recovery and extract modeling parameters used in
upscaling. To enhance the understanding of the evolution of the saturation
distribution within the rock sample, we present the utilization of
X-ray computed tomography to image six distinct surfactant/polymer
corefloods. In doing so, we visualize the formation and propagation
of an oil bank by reconstructing multidimensional saturation maps.
We conduct experiments on three distinct core sizes and two different
surfactants, an SBDS/isbutanol formulation and an L-145-10s 90 formulation,
in order to decouple the effect of these two parameters on the flow
behavior observed in situ. We note that the oil production post oil
bank breakthrough is primarily influenced by the surfactant choice,
with the SDBS/isobutanol formulation displaying longer tailing production
of a low oil cut. On the other hand, the core size dominated the extent
of self-similarity of the saturation profiles with smaller cores showing
less overlap in the self-similarity profiles. Consequently, we highlight
the difference in applicability of a fractional flow approach to larger
and smaller cores for upscaling parameter extraction and thus provide
guidance for corefloods where direct imaging is not available