Development of cost-effective surfactant flooding technology. Quarterly report, January 1, 1994--March 31, 1994
The objective of this research is to develop cost-effective surfactant flooding technology by using surfactant simulation studies to evaluate and optimize alternative design strategies taking into account reservoir characteristics, process chemistry, and process design options such as horizontal wells. Task 1 is the development of an improved numerical method for our simulator that will enable us to solve a wider class of these difficult simulation problems accurately and affordably. Task 2 is the application of this simulator to the optimization of surfactant flooding to reduce its risk and cost. The goal of Task 2 is to understand and generalize the impact of both process and reservoir characteristics on the optimal design of surfactant flooding. We have studied the effect of process parameters such as salinity gradient, surfactant adsorption, surfactant concentration, surfactant slug size, pH, polymer concentration and well constraints on surfactant floods. In this report, we show three dimensional field scale simulation results to illustrate the impact of one important design parameter, the salinity gradient. Although the use of a salinity gradient to improve the efficiency and robustness of surfactant flooding has been studied and applied for many years, this is the first time that we have evaluated it using stochastic simulations rather than simulations using the traditional layered reservoir description. The surfactant flooding simulations were performed using The University of Texas chemical flooding simulator called UTCHEM.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC22-92BC14885
- OSTI ID:
- 10182344
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/BC/14885-7; ON: DE94018776; BR: AC1510100
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: [1994]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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