The use of surfactants in enhanced oil recovery: A review of recent advances

Massarweh, Osama; Abushaikha, Ahmad

doi:10.1016/j.egyr.2020.11.009

Cited by 342 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 290 publications

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“…e decreasing trend of fossil resources discovery in parallel with the expanding energy demand raises the eminence of techniques and approaches (reservoir-based and well-based) applied to improve the recovery of current resources [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. Approximately, 70% of the reserves are not producible naturally [11][12][13][14][15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Microemulsion Flooding Study to Increase Low Viscosity Oil Recovery Using Glass Micromodel

Hematpur¹,

Abdollahi²,

Safari-Beidokhti³

et al. 2021

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

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The growing demand for clean energy can be met by improving the recovery of current resources. One of the effective methods in recovering the unswept reserves is chemical flooding. Microemulsion flooding is an alternative for surfactant flooding in a chemical-enhanced oil recovery method and can entirely sweep the remaining oil in porous media. The efficiency of microemulsion flooding is guaranteed through phase behavior analysis and customization regarding the actual field conditions. Reviewing the literature, there is a lack of experience that compared the macroscopic and microscopic efficiency of microemulsion flooding, especially in low viscous oil reservoirs. In the current study, one-quarter five-spot glass micromodel was implemented for investigating the effect of different parameters on microemulsion efficiency, including surfactant types, injection rate, and micromodel pattern. Image analysis techniques were applied to represent the phase saturations throughout the microemulsion flooding tests. The results confirm the appropriate efficiency of microemulsion flooding in improving the ultimate recovery. LABS microemulsion has the highest efficiency, and the increment of the injection rate has an adverse effect on oil recovery. According to the pore structure’s tests, it seems that permeability has little impact on recovery. The results of this study can be used in enhanced oil recovery designs in low-viscosity oil fields. It shows the impact of crucial parameters in microemulsion flooding.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental Microemulsion Flooding Study to Increase Low Viscosity Oil Recovery Using Glass Micromodel

Hematpur¹,

Abdollahi²,

Safari-Beidokhti³

et al. 2021

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

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“…Surfactants are amphiphilic (hydrophilic and hydrophobic simultaneously) agents that reduce the oil-water interfacial tension (IFT) and form water-in-oil or oil-in-water emulsions (Sheng 2015;Torrealba and Hoteit 2019). As a result, the trapped unrecovered oil is redistributed and mobilized leading to the incremental oil recovery of up to 30% OOIP (Massarweh and Abushaikha 2020). Surfactant injection is a widely used EOR method since there is a wide range of surfactant types each of which is suitable to use under desired criteria of water salinity, reservoir temperature, adsorption to reservoir rock, and operational costs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capillary desaturation curve: does low salinity surfactant flooding significantly reduce the residual oil saturation?

Zivar

Pourafshary

Moradpour

2021

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

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Different oil displacement experiments conducted on sandstone and carbonate samples show that low salinity water (LSW) injection can reduce the residual oil saturation (ROS). Recently, surfactant flooding (SF) in combination with low salinity water (known as low salinity surfactant (LSS) flooding) is proposed as a potentially promising hybrid enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process. A lower ROS is reported for a LSS process compared to that seen in SF or with LSW at the same capillary number. The capillary desaturation curve (CDC) is a well-known tool to study the effect of viscous and capillary forces on ROS for different EOR techniques. In this study, ROS data of various LSW, SF, and LSS flooding experiments at different capillary numbers are collected to develop a CDC to analyze the performance of the hybrid LSS method. This can help to analyze the effect of the hybrid method on an extra improvement in sweep efficiency and reduction in residual oil. A lower ROS is observed for LSS compared to LSW and SF in the same capillary number range. Our study shows different behaviors of the hybrid method at different ranges of capillary numbers. Three regions are identified based on the capillary number values. The difference in ROS is not significant in the first region (capillary number in the range of 10−7–10−5), which is not applicable in the presence of surfactant due to the low interfacial tension value. A significant reduction in ROS is observed in the second region (capillary number in the range of 10−5–10−2) for LSS compared to SF. This region is the most practical range for SF and LSS flooding. Hence, the application of LSS provides a noticeable benefit compared to normal EOR techniques. In the third region (capillary numbers greater than 10−2), where the surfactant flooding is a better performer, the difference in ROS is negligible.

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“…Naturally fractured reservoirs (NFR's) have been an important research topic in the field of multiphase flow in porous media due to the complex nature of the multi-phase flow in the fracture-matrix system. Such reservoirs form the vast majority of oil and gas reserves in the world (Saidi 1983;Gong and Rossen 2018) as they are a target for EOR applications Massarweh and Abushaikha (2020), and are characterized by their heterogeneous distribution of porosity and permeability Thomas et al (1983). Thus, it is critical to understand the underlying physical phenomena that control the amount of recoverable hydrocarbons from NFR's.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling the effects of capillary pressure with the presence of full tensor permeability and discrete fracture models using the mimetic finite difference method

2021

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Capillary dominated flow or imbibition—whether spontaneous or forced—is an important physical phenomena in understanding the behavior of naturally fractured water-driven reservoirs (NFR’s). When the water flows through the fractures, it imbibes into the matrix and pushes the oil out of the pores due to the difference in the capillary pressure. In this paper, we focus on modeling and quantifying the oil recovered from NFR’s through the imbibition processes using a novel fully implicit mimetic finite difference (MFD) approach coupled with discrete fracture/discrete matrix (DFDM) technique. The investigation is carried out in the light of different wetting states of the porous media (i.e., varying capillary pressure curves) and a full tensor representation of the permeability. The produced results proved the MFD to be robust in preserving the physics of the problem, and accurately mapping the flow path in the investigated domains. The wetting state of the rock affects greatly the oil recovery factors along with the orientation of the fractures and the principal direction of the permeability tensor. We can conclude that our novel MFD method can handle the fluid flow problems in discrete-fractured reservoirs. Future works will be focused on the extension of MFD method to more complex multi-physics simulations.

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The use of surfactants in enhanced oil recovery: A review of recent advances

Cited by 342 publications

References 290 publications

Experimental Microemulsion Flooding Study to Increase Low Viscosity Oil Recovery Using Glass Micromodel

Experimental Microemulsion Flooding Study to Increase Low Viscosity Oil Recovery Using Glass Micromodel

Capillary desaturation curve: does low salinity surfactant flooding significantly reduce the residual oil saturation?

Modeling the effects of capillary pressure with the presence of full tensor permeability and discrete fracture models using the mimetic finite difference method

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