Microfluidic Fabrication Techniques for High-Pressure Testing of Microscale Supercritical CO2 Foam Transport in Fractured Unconventional Reservoirs

Hosseini, Hooman; Guo, Feng; Ghahfarokhi, Reza Barati; Aryana, Saman A.

doi:10.3791/61369

Title: Microfluidic Fabrication Techniques for High-Pressure Testing of Microscale Supercritical CO₂ Foam Transport in Fractured Unconventional Reservoirs

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Abstract

Pressure limitations of many microfluidic platforms have been a significant challenge in microfluidic experimental studies of fractured media. As a result, these platforms have not been fully exploited for direct observation of high-pressure transport in fractures. This work introduces microfluidic platforms that enable direct observation of multiphase flow in devices featuring surrogate permeable media and fractured systems. Such platforms provide a pathway to address important and timely questions such as those related to CO₂ capture, utilization and storage. This work provides a detailed description of the fabrication techniques and an experimental setup that may serve to analyze the behavior of supercritical CO₂ (scCO₂) foam, its structure and stability. Such studies provide important insights regarding enhanced oil recovery processes and the role of hydraulic fractures in resource recovery from unconventional reservoirs. This work presents a comparative study of microfluidic devices developed using two different techniques: photolithography/wet-etching/ thermal-bonding versus Selective Laser-induced Etching. Both techniques result in devices that are chemically and physically resistant and tolerant of high pressure and temperature conditions that correspond to subsurface systems of interest. Both techniques provide pathways to high-precision etched microchannels and capable lab-on-chip devices. Photolithography/wet-etching, however, enables fabrication of complex channel networks with complex geometries, whichmore »« less

Authors:

Hosseini, Hooman ^[1]; Guo, Feng ^[2]; Ghahfarokhi, Reza Barati ^[1];

^[2]

Univ. of Kansas, Lawrence, KS (United States)
Univ. of Wyoming, Laramie, WY (United States)

Publication Date:: Thu Jul 02 00:00:00 EDT 2020

Research Org.:: Univ. of Wyoming, Laramie, WY (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

OSTI Identifier:: 1759009

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0019165

Resource Type:: Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:: Journal of Visualized Experiments

Additional Journal Information:: Journal Issue: 161; Journal ID: ISSN 1940-087X

Publisher:: MyJoVE Corp.

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

Subject:: 37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY

Citation Formats


                    Hosseini, Hooman, Guo, Feng, Ghahfarokhi, Reza Barati, and Aryana, Saman A. Microfluidic Fabrication Techniques for High-Pressure Testing of Microscale Supercritical CO2 Foam Transport in Fractured Unconventional Reservoirs.  United States: N. p., 2020. 
Web.  doi:10.3791/61369.

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                    Hosseini, Hooman, Guo, Feng, Ghahfarokhi, Reza Barati, & Aryana, Saman A. Microfluidic Fabrication Techniques for High-Pressure Testing of Microscale Supercritical CO2 Foam Transport in Fractured Unconventional Reservoirs.  United States.  https://doi.org/10.3791/61369

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                    Hosseini, Hooman, Guo, Feng, Ghahfarokhi, Reza Barati, and Aryana, Saman A. Thu .  
"Microfluidic Fabrication Techniques for High-Pressure Testing of Microscale Supercritical CO2 Foam Transport in Fractured Unconventional Reservoirs".  United States.  https://doi.org/10.3791/61369.  https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1759009.

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@article{osti_1759009,

  title        = {Microfluidic Fabrication Techniques for High-Pressure Testing of Microscale Supercritical CO2 Foam Transport in Fractured Unconventional Reservoirs},

  author       = {Hosseini, Hooman and Guo, Feng and Ghahfarokhi, Reza Barati and Aryana, Saman A.},

  abstractNote = {Pressure limitations of many microfluidic platforms have been a significant challenge in microfluidic experimental studies of fractured media. As a result, these platforms have not been fully exploited for direct observation of high-pressure transport in fractures. This work introduces microfluidic platforms that enable direct observation of multiphase flow in devices featuring surrogate permeable media and fractured systems. Such platforms provide a pathway to address important and timely questions such as those related to CO2 capture, utilization and storage. This work provides a detailed description of the fabrication techniques and an experimental setup that may serve to analyze the behavior of supercritical CO2 (scCO2) foam, its structure and stability. Such studies provide important insights regarding enhanced oil recovery processes and the role of hydraulic fractures in resource recovery from unconventional reservoirs. This work presents a comparative study of microfluidic devices developed using two different techniques: photolithography/wet-etching/ thermal-bonding versus Selective Laser-induced Etching. Both techniques result in devices that are chemically and physically resistant and tolerant of high pressure and temperature conditions that correspond to subsurface systems of interest. Both techniques provide pathways to high-precision etched microchannels and capable lab-on-chip devices. Photolithography/wet-etching, however, enables fabrication of complex channel networks with complex geometries, which would be a challenging task for laser etching techniques. This work summarizes a step-by-step photolithography, wet-etching and glass thermal-bonding protocol and, presents representative observations of foam transport with relevance to oil recovery from unconventional tight and shale formations. In conclusion, this work describes the use of a high resolution monochromatic sensor to observe scCO2 foam behavior where the entirety of the permeable medium is observed simultaneously while preserving the resolution needed to resolve features as small as 10 μm.},

  doi          = {10.3791/61369},

  journal      = {Journal of Visualized Experiments},

  number       = 161,

  volume       = ,

  place        = {United States},

  year         = {Thu Jul 02 00:00:00 EDT 2020},

  month        = {Thu Jul 02 00:00:00 EDT 2020}

}

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Title: Microfluidic Fabrication Techniques for High-Pressure Testing of Microscale Supercritical CO2 Foam Transport in Fractured Unconventional Reservoirs

Abstract

Citation Formats

Title: Microfluidic Fabrication Techniques for High-Pressure Testing of Microscale Supercritical CO₂ Foam Transport in Fractured Unconventional Reservoirs