Experimental study of polymer injection enhanced oil recovery in homogeneous and heterogeneous porous media using glass-type micromodels

Seyed Javad Hosseini, Jalal Foroozesh*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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    Abstract

    In water flooding process, volumetric sweep efficiency and oil recovery can be enhanced using polymer to increase the viscosity of water. As a result, polymer flooding has higher recovery as compared to water flooding due to front stability and reduction of fingering problem. In this research work, a set of polymer flooding runs were carried out using glass-type micromodels. The micromodels were fabricated to have homogeneous and heterogeneous flow patterns. They were positioned horizontally and saturated with a heavy crude oil sample taken from an Iranian oil field before starting the injection. Three commercial polymers were used in this study. Whole process was photographed continuously with a high-resolution camera to monitor the displacement of polymer solution in the micromodels. As a part of this study, the effect of different parameters including polymer solution concentration, injection flow rate and heterogeneity on performance of polymer flooding was investigated. On top of the regular homogeneous and heterogeneous flow patterns used in this study, a heterogeneous flow pattern mimicking sandstone reservoirs was created based on the image of a thin section of a sandstone (outcrop) and polymer front movement was observed during injection.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)627-637
    Number of pages11
    JournalJournal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology
    Volume9
    Issue number1
    Early online date1 Jun 2018
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2019

    Keywords

    • glass-type micromodel
    • polymer injection
    • sweep efficiency

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