Formulation of a General Multiphase, Multicomponent Chemical Flood Model

Abstract

A general multi phase, multicomponent chemical flood model has been formulated. The set of mass conservation laws for each component in an isothermal system is closed by assuming local thermodynamic (phase) equilibrium, Darcy's law for multiphase flow through porous media, and Fick's law of diffusion. For the special case of binary, twophase flow of non mixing incompressible fluids, the equations reduce to those of Buckley and Leverett. The Buckley-Leverett equations also may be obtained for significant fractions of both components in the phases if the two phases are sufficiently incompressible. To illustrate the usefulness of the approach, a simple chemical flood model for a ternary, two-phase system is obtained which can be applied to surfactant flooding, polymer flooding, caustic flooding, etc.

On the Mechanisms of Mobilization of Residual Oil Left After Waterflooding

“…This case best illustrates the coupling of the recovery mechanisms. A similar explanation is valid for Figure 5.1 for a solubilization parameter of 0.5, by examining Equation 5 and Figure 4 which rule the interfacial tension.…”

“…The theory of multicomponent, multiphase flow has been presented by several authors [3][4][5][6] . That theory was first applied to two-phase, three-component systems [7][8][9][10][11] .…”

Influence of phase behavior on chemical flood transport phenomena

“…Consequently, in a chemical flood a mulficomponent, multiphase system is involved. The theory of multicomponent, multiphase flow has been presented by Lake et al (1984), Helfferich (1981) and Fleming et aL (1981). Its application to twophase, three-component systems has been initially reported by Larson and Hirasaki (1978), Nelson and Pope (1978), Pope et al (1979), Hirasaki (1981), Larson et al (1982), Van Quy et aL (1983) and Thomas et al (1984).…”

Simulation of Surfactant Oil Recovery Processes and the Role of Phase Behaviour Parameters

“…The objective in designing surfactants for EOR is to achieve low interfacial tension at low concentrations, and acceptable adsorption levels on the rock formation [21][22][23]. A multicomponent, multiphase system is present in porous media and several authors have already studied how to numerically simulate this kind of flow for both compressible and incompressible systems [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. This has led to the development of academic and commercial simulators like UTCHEM (University of Texas at Austin), CMG (Stars) and Eclipse (Schlumberger), as well as several others that can be found in the literature [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”