Special Issue "Oil Recovery"

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Peter E. Clark
A130 Bevill, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487, USA
Website: http://che.eng.ua.edu/people/faculty_details.asp?ID=23
E-Mail:
Interests: petroleum engineering, enhanced oil recovery, carbon sequestration

Related Special Issues in other Journals

Biosurfactants in IJMS

Submission

All manuscripts should be submitted to energies@mdpi.org with a copy to the Guest Editor. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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• petroleum engineering
• recovery

Title: Enhanced Oil Recovery: Status and Opportunities
Authors: Eduardo J. Manrique and Vladimir Alvarado
Affiliation: NORWEST CORPORATION, 1010 10th Street, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA; E-Mail: emanrique@norwestcorp.com; Website: www.norwestcorp.com
Abstract: to be added

Type of Paper: Review
Title: State-of-the-Art Review of Production Systems Optimization Methods for Petroleum Fields
Authors: Cheng Seong Khor ¹ and Ali Elkamel ²
Affiliations: ¹ Chemical Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia; E-Mails: cskhor@engmail.uwaterloo.ca, khor_cheng_seong@yahoo.co.uk
² Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada; E-Mail: aelkamel@cape.uwaterloo.ca
Abstract: In this review, we survey the widespread use of optimization or mathematical programming approaches in the upstream sector of the petroleum industry, specifically to problems in the area of (1) production systems design and operations, (2) lift gas and production rate allocation, and (3) reservoir development, planning, management, and optimization. Early applications have adopted linear programming alongside heuristics-based methods, but the recent ongoing explosion in computing power and advances in optimization, simulation, and computational techniques have enabled the adoption of increasingly complex models. These formulations include nonlinear programming and mixed-integer linear (MILP) and nonlinear (MINLP) programming models. Within these representations, various algorithms and approaches have been employed, for example, metaheuristics such as genetic algorithms to address non-smooth objective functions; techniques for simultaneous decision-making in design, planning and scheduling; and stochastic programming to handle uncertainty in reservoir information, with the ultimate aim of improving solution quality while reducing computational intensity.

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Stability Proxies for Water-in-Oil Emulsions in Aqueous-Based EOR
Authors: Vladimir Alvarado and Xiuyu Wang
Affiliation: Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA; E-Mail: valvarad@uwyo.edu
Abstract: Water-in-oil emulsions are often found in oil production streams, generally causing increased operating costs associated with artificial lift of viscous fluids, water-oil separation and dehydration prior to refining operations as well as corrosion of production lines and equipment. On the other hand, a number of researchers have proposed that mobility control mechanisms can be a positive contribution of emulsions generated as a result of the EOR operation. The first step toward understanding this problem is to prove that EOR conditions can provide conditions for stable emulsions. Chemical EOR that uses alkaline components or/and surfactants are known to produce harmful emulsions that are difficult to break. Other water-based methods have been less studied in this sense. This paper will present a succinct review of aqueous-based Enhanced-Oil Recovery (EOR) processes in regards to in-situ emulsion generation. This will provide a context for the comparison of water-in-oil emulsion stability proxies, namely recently developed bottle tests and direct current electrorheology. Chemical EOR processes such as polymer flooding and Lo-SalTM injection require adjustments of water chemistry, mainly by lowering the ionic strength of the solution or by decreasing divalent cations concentration or hardness. We show that the two stability proxies are mutually consistent. The decreased ionic strength of EOR solutions can give rise to more stable water-in-oil emulsions, which are speculated to be partially responsible for improved mobility ratio between the injectant and the displaced oil.