Determination of Water-in-Oil Emulsion Viscosity in Porous Media

Abstract

Experiments have been conducted to determine the viscosities of water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions in porous media. W/O emulsions were first prepared for different volume fractions of the dispersed phase and then characterized for their properties and rheological parameters including flow index and consistency constant. All prepared W/O emulsions with volume fractions between 6.78% and 33.48% were found to behave as non-Newtonian shear-thinning fluids at fairly high viscosities. The viscosities of the emulsions were measured during emulsion flow in three types of sandpacks. A correlation of the viscosities of the W/O emulsions in porous media was developed by performing a regression on the experimentally measured data. The newly developed correlation was validated, and a sensitivity analysis was performed to examine the effects of tortuosity and emulsion quality. The emulsion quality has a dominant effect on the viscosity of the W/O emulsions and has been included in the correlation for the first time to achieve accurate predictions of the viscosities of W/O emulsions in porous media. The existing correlations for oil-in-water (O/W) emulsions provide underestimated predictions for the viscosities of W/O emulsions, whereas the droplet size distribution does not have a significant impact on the viscosity of the W/O emulsions tested in this study.

Modeling of flow of oil-in-water emulsions through porous media

“…Emulsion flow through porous media is an important phenomenon in oil production operations and is also a topic of special interest in many applications of science and engineering, especially petroleum industries (Soo and Radke 1984;Soma and Papadopoulos 1995;Vidrine et al 2000;Arhuoma et al 2009;Cobos et al 2009). It has been suggested that oil migrates through reservoir sands in the form of a fine, dispersed emulsion of oil in water, and that oil accumulations occur where the stream enters finer-grained rock such as silt or shale.…”

Study on Influencing Factors of Chemical Flooding for Heavy Oil

“…Therefore, these columns may be split there and gradually transformed into small water droplets-w=o emulsion. All these dispersions exhibit good Jamin effect and high viscosity, [13][14][15] so the fingering effect is greatly suppressed.…”

Sweep Efficiency Improvement by Alkaline Flooding for Pelican Lake Heavy Oil

“…4) With the formation of a W/O emulsion, the pressure drop across the micromodel increased. This is because that the water-in-heavy oil emulsion has a much higher viscosity than the water and the resistance to water flow in the water channels are increased significantly 21 . This is the mechanism that will be studied in alkaline flooding for heavy oil to improve sweep efficiency and thus oil recovery.…”