Special Issue "Oil Recovery"
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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2010)
Special Issue Editor
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: pclark@eng.ua.edu
Phone: +1 205 348 1682
Fax: +1 205 348 7558
Interests: petroleum engineering, enhanced oil recovery, carbon sequestration
Special Issue Information
Related Special Issues in other Journals
Biosurfactants in IJMS
Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. 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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Keywords
- petroleum engineering
- recovery
Published Papers (6 papers)
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Received: 23 April 2008; in revised form: 30 May 2008 / Accepted: 2 June 2008 / Published: 6 July 2008
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Abstract: It is customary, for convenience, to use relative permeability data produced at room temperature. This paper shows that this practice underestimates oil recovery rates and ultimate recovery from chalk rocks for high temperature reservoirs. Above a certain temperature (80°C in this work) a reduction of oil recovery was observed. The reduction in oil recovery is reflected by the shift of relative permeability data towards more oil-wet at high temperature (tested here 130°C). However, both IFT and contact angle measurements indicate an increase in water wetness as temperature increases, which contradict the results obtained by relative permeability experiments. This phenomenon may be explained based on the total interaction potential, which basically consists of van der Waals attractive and short-range Born repulsive and double layer electrostatic forces. The fluid/rock interactions is shown to be dominated by the repulsive forces above 80°C, hence increase fine detachment enhancing oil trapping. In other words the indicated oil wetness by relative permeability is misleading.
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Received: 6 May 2009; in revised form: 4 August 2009 / Accepted: 27 August 2009 / Published: 2 September 2009
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Abstract: An EOR study has been performed applying miscible CO2 flooding and compared with that for water flooding. Three different oils are used, reference oil (n-decane), model oil (n-C10, SA, toluene and 0.35 wt % asphaltene) and crude oil (10 wt % asphaltene) obtained from the Middle East. Stearic acid (SA) is added representing a natural surfactant in oil. For the non-asphaltenic oil, miscible CO2 flooding is shown to be more favourable than that by water. However, it is interesting to see that for first years after the start of the injection (< 3 years) it is shown that there is almost no difference between the recovered oils by water and CO2, after which (> 3 years) oil recovery by gas injection showed a significant increase. This may be due to the enhanced performance at the increased reservoir pressure during the first period. Maximum oil recovery is shown by miscible CO2 flooding of asphaltenic oil at combined temperatures and pressures of 50 °C/90 bar and 70 °C/120 bar (no significant difference between the two cases, about 1%) compared to 80 °C/140 bar. This may support the positive influence of the high combined temperatures and pressures for the miscible CO2 flooding; however beyond a certain limit the oil recovery declined due to increased asphaltene deposition. Another interesting finding in this work is that for single phase oil, an almost linear relationship is observed between the pressure drop and the asphaltene deposition regardless of the flowing fluid pressure.
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Received: 8 April 2010 / Accepted: 29 April 2010 / Published: 30 April 2010
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Abstract: If you meet someone at a party who says that he is Napoleon, you don’t start discussing cavalry tactics at Waterloo ─ Professor Robert Solow
Well that depends, Robert. If he is the gentleman who gave the party, and you would like to receive another invitation from him some day, you might feel it wise to suggest that if his boys had been riding elephants or dinosaurs instead of horses, he might have enjoyed another few years in swinging Paris instead of being turned over to that nasty Sir Hudson Lowe on St. Helena. [...]
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Received: 27 June 2010 / Accepted: 10 August 2010 / Published: 27 August 2010
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Abstract: With the decline in oil discoveries during the last decades it is believed that EOR technologies will play a key role to meet the energy demand in years to come. This paper presents a comprehensive review of EOR status and opportunities to increase final recovery factors in reservoirs ranging from extra heavy oil to gas condensate. Specifically, the paper discusses EOR status and opportunities organized by reservoir lithology (sandstone and carbonates formations and turbiditic reservoirs to a lesser extent) and offshore and onshore fields. Risk and rewards of EOR methods including growing trends in recent years such as CO2 injection, high pressure air injection (HPAI) and chemical flooding are addressed including a brief overview of CO2-EOR project economics.
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Received: 6 September 2010; in revised form: 20 September 2010 / Accepted: 27 September 2010 / Published: 29 September 2010
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Abstract: This paper describes an analytical approach to investigate the nature of short overbalanced conditions and time effects during underbalanced drilling (UBD) in a naturally fractured reservoir. This study uses an analytical model which is developed for kinetic invasion of mud into the fractures. The model is based on fluid flow between two parallel plates, which is further extended to model the fluid flow in a fractured formation. The effect of short overbalanced pressure and the time effect during UBD as well as the aspects of well productivity and flow efficiency are explained. This model is an Excel-based program and provides a fast and convenient tool for analysis and evaluation of drilling conditions (mud properties, time, and pressure of drilling) in a fractured formation. The model can also predict the impact of the fracture and mud properties on the depth of invasion in the fractured formations.
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Received: 25 May 2011; in revised form: 1 July 2011 / Accepted: 12 July 2011 / Published: 18 July 2011
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Abstract: Several researchers have proposed that mobility control mechanisms can positively contribute to oil recovery in the case of emulsions generated in Enhanced-Oil Recovery (EOR) operations. Chemical EOR techniques that use alkaline components or/and surfactants are known to produce undesirable emulsions that create operational problems and are difficult to break. Other water-based methods have been less studied in this sense. EOR processes such as polymer flooding and LoSalTM injection require adjustments of water chemistry, mainly by lowering the ionic strength of the solution or by decreasing hardness. The decreased ionic strength of EOR solutions can give rise to more stable water-in-oil emulsions, which are speculated to improve mobility ratio between the injectant and the displaced oil. The first step toward understanding the connection between the emulsions and EOR mechanisms is to show that EOR conditions, such as salinity and hardness requirements, among others, are conducive to stabilizing emulsions. In order to do this, adequate stability proxies are required. This paper reviews commonly used emulsion stability proxies and explains the advantages and disadvantage of methods reviewed. This paper also reviews aqueous-based EOR processes with focus on heavy oil to contextualize in-situ emulsion stabilization conditions. This context sets the basis for comparison of emulsion stability proxies.
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Last update: 5 October 2012
