Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery: Advances in Polymer Flooding and Nanotechnology / Edition 1

by Patrizio Raffa, Pablo Druetta

Overview

This book aims at presenting, describing, and summarizing the latest advances in polymer flooding regarding the chemical synthesis of the EOR agents and the numerical simulation of compositional models in porous media, including a description of the possible applications of nanotechnology acting as a booster of traditional chemical EOR processes.

A large part of the world economy depends nowadays on non-renewable energy sources, most of them of fossil origin. Though the search for and the development of newer, greener, and more sustainable sources have been going on for the last decades, humanity is still fossil-fuel dependent. Primary and secondary oil recovery techniques merely produce up to a half of the Original Oil In Place. Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) processes are aimed at further increasing this value. Among these, chemical EOR techniques (including polymer flooding) present a great potential in low- and medium-viscosity oilfields.

• Describes recent advances in chemical enhanced oil recovery.

• Contains detailed description of polymer flooding and nanotechnology as promising boosting tools for EOR.

• Includes both experimental and theoretical studies.

About the Authors

Patrizio Raffa

is Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. He focuses on design and synthesis of new polymeric materials optimized for industrial applications such as EOR, coatings and smart materials. He (co)authored about 40 articles in peer reviewed journals.

Pablo Druetta

works as lecturer at the University of Groningen (RUG) and as engineering consultant. He received his Ph.D. from RUG in 2018 and has been teaching at a graduate level for 15 years. His research focus lies on computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110640243
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	07/22/2019
Series:	De Gruyter STEM
Pages:	185
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.45(h) x 0.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Patrizio Raffa and Pablo Druetta, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations ix

List of Symbols xi

1 An introduction to chemical enhanced oil recovery 1

1.1 Current trends in oil recovery 1

1.2 Enhanced oil recovery 4

1.3 Reservoir lithology 8

1.4 Types of crude oil 9

1.5 Chemical EOR 10

References 12

2 Polymer flooding 15

2.1 Introduction 15

2.2 Theory 16

2.2.1 Mobility control 17

2.2.2 Permeability reduction 20

2.2.3 Flow resistance 20

2.2.4 Polymer solution rheology 21

2.3 Criteria for polymer selection 23

2.3.1 Costs 23

2.3.2 Filtration properties 24

2.3.3 Viscosity 24

2.3.4 Interactions with surfactants 26

2.3.5 Salinity resistance 26

2.3.6 Thermal and mechanical stability 27

2.3.7 Injectivity, retention and polymer adsorption 27

2.3.8 Microbial and chemical degradation 28

2.3.9 Conclusions on selection criteria 28

2.4 Currently used polymers for chemical enhanced oil recovery 29

2.5 PAM and HPAM 29

2.5.1 Synthesis 29

2.5.2 Molecular structure 30

2.5.3 Degree of hydrolysis 32

2.5.4 Degradation 33

2.6 Modified PAM and HPAM 34

2.6.1 HPAM modified with charged monomers 35

2.6.2 Hydrophobically associating HPAM 36

2.6.3 Thermo-thickening HPAM 40

2.6.4 Other PAM-derived polymers proposed for EOR 41

2.7 Biopolymers 44

2.7.1 Xanthan gum 44

2.7.2 Other biopolymers 46

2.8 Other miscellaneous polymers 47

2.9 Conclusions on polymer flooding 47

References 47

3 Numerical simulation of chemical EOR 53

3.1 Oil extraction and fluid flow equations 53

3.1.1 Introduction 53

3.1.2 Reservoir characterization and formation 56

3.1.3 Fluid flow models 61

3.2 Numerical techniques for fluid flow in porous media 70

3.2.1 Numerical schemes 72

3.2.2 Numerical dissipation and dispersion 75

3.2.3 Flux limiters 78

3.2.4 Consistency and stability 81

3.3 Conclusions 83

References 84

4 Compositional simulation applied to EOR polymer flooding 91

4.1 Introduction 91

4.1.1 Polymer flooding 91

4.1.2 Previous numerical work 93

4.2 Aim of this chapter 94

4.3 Physical model 95

4.4 Mathematical model 97

4.4.1 Flow equations 97

4.4.2 Physical properties 99

4.4.3 Boundary conditions 109

4.4.4 Nondimensionalization of the transport equations 110

4.4.5 Discretization of the partial differential equations 110

4.4.6 Solution algorithm 114

4.5 Solution and validation 116

4.5.1 Validation of the model 116

4.6 Conclusions 117

References 118

5 Nanotechnology in enhanced oil recovery 123

5.1 Introduction 123

5.1.1 Nanotechnology 123

5.1.2 Nanotechnology in EOR 124

5.2 Nanofluids 126

5.2.1 Introduction 126

5.2.2 Properties of nanoparticles 128

5.2.3 Polysilicon nanoparticles in porous media 129

5.2.4 Effect of nanoparticles on reservoir and fluid properties 131

5.3 Nanoemulsions 143

5.3.1 Introduction 143

5.3.2 Nanoemulsion stability 147

5.3.3 Preparation of nanoemulsions 150

5.4 Conclusions 153

References 154

Index 171