Microfluidic devices containing thin rock sections for oil recovery studies

Gerold, Chase T.; Krummel, Amber T.; Henry, Charles S.

doi:10.1007/s10404-018-2096-7

Cited by 16 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 28 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Microfluidic Surface Chemistry : Most microfluidic visualization studies use devices made with PDMS, which may not adequately recapitulate the complex surface chemistry of real‐world porous media. However, advances continue to be made in the development of microfluidic channels etched directly into mineral substrates, thus enabling flow visualization in channels with surfaces made of real rock material . While this technology has been used to shed light on questions relating to chemical reactions in porous media, it has yet to be employed in studies of polymer solution flow.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pore‐Scale Flow Characterization of Polymer Solutions in Microfluidic Porous Media

Browne

Shih

Datta

2019

Small

103

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Polymer solutions are frequently used in enhanced oil recovery and groundwater remediation to improve the recovery of trapped nonaqueous fluids. However, applications are limited by an incomplete understanding of the flow in porous media. The tortuous pore structure imposes both shear and extension, which elongates polymers; moreover, the flow is often at large Weissenberg numbers, Wi, at which polymer elasticity in turn strongly alters the flow. This dynamic elongation can even produce flow instabilities with strong spatial and temporal fluctuations despite the low Reynolds number, Re. Unfortunately, macroscopic approaches are limited in their ability to characterize the pore‐scale flow. Thus, understanding how polymer conformations, flow dynamics, and pore geometry together determine these nontrivial flow patterns and impact macroscopic transport remains an outstanding challenge. This review describes how microfluidic tools can shed light on the physics underlying the flow of polymer solutions in porous media at high Wi and low Re. Specifically, microfluidic studies elucidate how steady and unsteady flow behavior depends on pore geometry and solution properties, and how polymer‐induced effects impact nonaqueous fluid recovery. This work thus provides new insights for polymer dynamics, non‐Newtonian fluid mechanics, and applications such as enhanced oil recovery and groundwater remediation.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pore‐Scale Flow Characterization of Polymer Solutions in Microfluidic Porous Media

Browne

Shih

Datta

2019

Small

103

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“… 29 Some studies have used crude oil to visualize multiphase flow, 30 − 32 while others have used model oils. 2 , 33 A missing link in microfluidic studies is that most studies only look at one variable. While this provides valuable in-depth knowledge of the matter, the results cannot be projected to other systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a Microfluidic Method to Study Enhanced Oil Recovery by Low Salinity Water Flooding

Saadat

Tsai

et al. 2020

ACS Omega

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Microfluidics is an appealing method to study processes at rock pore scale such as oil recovery because of the similar size range. It also offers several advantages over the conventional core flooding methodology, for example, easy cleaning and reuse of the same porous network chips or the option to visually track the process. In this study, the effects of injection rate, flood volume, micromodel structure, initial brine saturation, aging, oil type, brine concentration, and composition are systematically investigated. The recovery process is evaluated based on a series of images taken during the experiment. The remaining crude oil saturation reaches a steady state after injection of a few pore volumes of the brine flood. The higher the injection rate, the higher the emulsification and agitation, leading to unstable displacement. Low salinity brine recovered more oil than the high salinity brine. Aging, initial brine saturation, and the presence of divalent ions in the flood led to a decrease in the oil recovery. Most of the tests in this study showed viscous fingering. The analysis of the experimental parameters allowed to develop a reliable and repeatable procedure for microfluidic water flooding. With the method in place, the enhanced oil recovery test developed based on different variables showed an increase of up to 2% of the original oil in place at the tertiary stage.

show abstract

“…The waterflooding conditions explored using two microfluidic chips (with the same design) are summarized in Table 1. In IOR from oil fields, the typical injection velocity typically varies between 1 and 4 ft/day; some variations exist between literature values (Gerold et al 2018;Sarvestani et al 2019). Since the flow rates correspond to typical capillary numbers in the range 10 -6 to 10 -5 , (Guo et al 2015) we have also explored this range (Table 1).…”

Section: Waterflooding Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Singh et al (2017) designed a new microfluidic test bed called "Real Rock Microfluidic Flow Cell (RR-MFC)", wherein a 500 µm-thick North Sea reservoir rock sample was mounted inside a PDMS microfluidic channel. Gerold et al (2018) fabricated and used a microfluidic device called "Flow On Rock Device (FORD)" by directly integrating thin sections of reservoir rock into micro-fluidics for oil recovery studies. While these microfluidic chips should offer a closer correspondence with the (geo) chemical properties in real oil reservoirs, they have not been used with water and oil as co-existing phases in three dimensions to the best of our knowledge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optical measurements of oil release from calcite packed beds in microfluidic channels

Le-Anh

Rao

Ayirala

et al. 2020

Microfluid Nanofluid

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To enable the study of improved oil recovery (IOR) from carbonate rock via laboratory experiments at the pore scale, we have developed a novel microfluidic chip containing a 3D packed bed of calcite particles. The utilization of fluorescently labeled water phase enabled visualization up to 1-2 particle layers with confocal laser scanning microscopy. Porosity and residual oil saturation (ROS) in this space are quantified from image stacks in the depth direction (Z). To obtain reliable average ROS values, Z stacks are captured at various XY locations and sampled over several time-steps in the steady state. All image stacks are binarized using Otsu's method, subsequent to automated corrections for imperfect illumination and Z-drifts of the microscope stage. Low salinity IOR was mimicked using a packed bed that was initially saturated with water and then with mineral oil. Steady state ROS values showed no significant dependence on capillary number (Ca) in the range from 6 × 10-7 to 2 × 10-5. In contrast, chemical modification of the pore space via adsorption of water-extracted crude oil components yielded significantly higher ROS values, in agreement with a more oil-wet porous medium. These results indicate a good potential for using packed beds on a chip as an efficient screening tool for the optimization and development of different IOR methods.

show abstract

Microfluidic devices containing thin rock sections for oil recovery studies

Cited by 16 publications

References 28 publications

Pore‐Scale Flow Characterization of Polymer Solutions in Microfluidic Porous Media

Pore‐Scale Flow Characterization of Polymer Solutions in Microfluidic Porous Media

Development of a Microfluidic Method to Study Enhanced Oil Recovery by Low Salinity Water Flooding

Optical measurements of oil release from calcite packed beds in microfluidic channels

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About