Development of cost-effective surfactant flooding technology. First annual report for the period, September 30, 1992--September 29, 1993
This research consists of the parallel development of a new chemical flooding simulator and the application of existing UTCHEM simulation code to model surfactant flooding. The new code is based upon a completely new numerical method that combines for the first time higher order finite difference methods, flux limiters, and implicit algorithms. Early results indicate that this approach has significant advantages in some problems and will likely enable simulation of much larger and more realistic chemical floods once it is fully developed. Additional improvements have also been made to the UTCHEM code and it has been applied for the first time to the study of stochastic reservoirs with and without horizontal wells to evaluate methods to reduce the cost and risk of surfactant flooding. During the first year of this contract, significant progress has been made on both of these tasks. The authors have found that there are indeed significant differences between the performance predictions based upon the traditional layered reservoir description and the more realistic and flexible descriptions using geostatistics. These preliminary studies of surfactant flooding using horizontal wells shows that although they have significant potential to greatly reduce project life and thus improve the economics of the process, their use requires accurate reservoir descriptions and simulations to be effective. Much more needs to be done to fully understand and optimize their use and develop reliable design criteria.
- Research Organization:
- Texas Univ., Austin, TX (United States). Center for Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC22-92BC14885
- OSTI ID:
- 10176466
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/BC/14885-5; ON: DE94000140; TRN: 94:007803
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Aug 1994
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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