Polymer flooding has drawn more and more attention in the world for its high incremental oil recovery factor and relative low costs compared with water flooding and other chemically enhanced oil recovery techniques. However, for many oilfields, such as Daqing Oilfield, China, that have already been flooded with polymers, how to further improve recovery remains a big problem. Traditional intralayer, interlayer and plane heterogeneity studies cannot accurately characterize the remaining oil distribution after polymer flooding. To solve this problem, we established a method to quantitatively describe the reservoir’s architecture. Then, the architecture elements were dissected hierarchically and the interface of each architecture level in Daqing Oilfield was identified. The distribution pattern and development potential of the remaining oil after polymer flooding under the influence of reservoir architecture was analyzed. The results show that, regarding the sedimentary process from north to south in Daqing Oilfield, the channel becomes narrower, the thickness decreases, the point bar’s width increases and the thickness of the meandering river decreases. The braided bar scale becomes larger and the thickness becomes smaller in the braided river. According to the reservoir’s architecture, the remaining oil was divided into four categories of plane remaining oil (abandoned channel occlusion type, interfluvial sand body occlusion type, inter-well retention type and well pattern uncontrollable type) and three types of vertical remaining oil (in-layer interlayer occlusion type, rhythm type and gravity type). About 40% of the original oil in place (OOIP) of Daqing Oilfield has not yet been produced, which indicates that there is great potential for development. This study is important for improving oil recovery in polymer-flooded reservoirs.

A unique experiment design is proposed to study the asphaltene precipitation caused by multiple contact processes during gas injection. The newly proposed experiment quantified the asphaltene precipitation at different methane contact steps. Twenty times methane contacts and corresponding asphaltene precipitation states are measured using a light scattering setup under reservoir condition. The amount of the asphaltene precipitation, the composition changes, and the physical properties changes are measured for the 20 times methane contacts. After verifying the asphaltene precipitation in the static experiments, the formation damage caused by the asphaltene precipitation is studied by core flooding tests for three different permeability cases. We found that the primary asphaltene precipitation mechanism in the multiple contact process during methane injection is not the composition change caused by methane extraction. The methane-induced asphaltene stability loss during the multiple contact process is vital. The size and the structure of asphaltene precipitation particles in the crude oil change with the methane contacts. We found that the mechanism of permeability reduction caused by asphaltene precipitation is different depending on the porous media pore throat size and the asphaltene precipitation particle size. Under our experimental condition, the asphaltene precipitation acts as a conformance control method, leading to well-distance optimization considerations in field applications.

Polymer flooding is an effective enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technology used in Daqing Oilfield. Microscopic distribution of remaining oil in polymer-flooded reservoirs is more complicated in comparison with waterflooded reservoirs. In this paper, UV excitation, frozen section-laser confocal technology, and three-dimensional reconstruction technology were employed to investigate the distribution law and occurrence state of the microscopic remaining oil in polymer-flooded Daqing Oilfield. With these methods, the occurrence states of the microscopic remaining oil distribution in different washing degrees and displacement locations were analyzed, and the remaining oil distribution before and after polymer flooding was compared quantitatively. The changes and microscopic distribution characteristics of crude oil components in the process of polymer flooding were clarified, and the relationship between clay minerals and the microscopic remaining oil distribution was discussed. Based on the statistical analysis of experimental results, the remaining oil of the free state decreases gradually, while the remaining oil of the bound state increases as the washing degree increases. In addition, the remaining oil in the distributary line is more enriched than the mainstream line after polymer flooding. Compared with waterflooding, the remaining oil of the free state becomes more, while the remaining oil of the bound state becomes less after polymer flooding. The frozen section-laser confocal experimental results also indicate that the proportion and distribution characteristics of the remaining oil components have been changed, and heavy components increase while light components decrease in the polymer-flooded stage. This research performs the quantized characterization and detailed analysis of remaining oil systematically and lays the foundation for remaining oil prediction and potential tapping in polymer-flooded reservoirs.

In this paper, a mathematical model has been developed to quantitatively examine the effect of viscosity and heterogeneity on dispersion in porous media at the pore scale during miscible flooding processes. More specifically, the Navier-Stokes equation and advection-diffusion equation are coupled with supplementary equations to describe the solvent transport behaviour. Two-dimensional heterogeneous models are numerically developed as a function of porosity and permeability, assuming that the grain sizes satisfy normal distribution. In addition, the performance of miscible hydrocarbon gas injection in heterogeneous porous media is comprehensively evaluated. It is found that a larger aspect ratio (ratio of pore throat size) in the single non-flowing pore model results in a greater asymmetry of the concentration curve. As for single non-flowing pore models and heterogeneous models, the dispersion coefficients increase with the expansion of the nonflowing domain. Both the heterogeneity of porous media and the variable viscosity of the fluid mixture contribute to the asymmetry of the concentration curve in the heterogeneous model. A negative correlation is established between the sorting coefficients of pore throat size and the power-law coefficients. As for slug injection, the injected solvent slug size along the longitudinal direction does not effectively influence the longitudinal length of the mixing zone for a given porous medium and fluids, though the Peclet number and the porosity greatly affect the length and concentration distribution of the mixing zone.