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Enhanced Oil Recovery
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Enhanced Oil Recovery

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 September 2018) | Viewed by 18265

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Hemanta Sarma

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada
Interests: petroleum engineering; enhanced oil recovery; chemical engineering
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) processes have made significant advances in recent years to meet the challenges that a diverse array of reservoirs pose around the world, taking science, engineering, design and big data mining and analysis to new heights. Even the traditional waterflood that formally started in the 1920s has moved up in sophistication to tackle difficult reservoirs, though many of its variations: Smart waterflooding, ionic manipulations, salinity control and augmentations through use of chemicals, notably polymer and surfactant. New comprehensive and integrated EOR strategies that optimally blend geology, 3D seismic and field development plans using smart wells are being developed. They are being powered by advanced computation and simulations. Light- and tight-oils recovery processes are fast emerging as the key to certain reservoirs. In heavy oil recovery processes, R&D efforts are increasingly targeting innovations and cost-effective measures to make them competitive in today's low oil price setting. Likewise, there have been certain noticeable changes in our emphasis on gas-based EOR processes as the industry is now more focused on moving away from conventional injection of "cleaner and greener" hydrocarbon gases; and moves to alternatives, such as CO2, flue gas and nitrogen. A concomitant approach that balances EOR with saving the environment has become our new mantra.  We envisage a greater need for EOR in some of the most prolific but deep and high temperature reservoirs in the near-term horizon, and hence, R&D activities are in full swing towards developing suitable EOR chemicals that stand against such extreme conditions and remain effective.

Prof. Dr. Hemanta Sarma
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short 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.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • enhanced oil recovery
  • waterflooding
  • gas injection processes
  • CO2 EOR and sequestration
  • heavy oil recovery
  • 3D Seismic
  • reservoir modelling
  • reservoir simulation

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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30 pages, 18322 KiB  
Article
Numerical Modeling and Validation of a Novel 2D Compositional Flooding Simulator Using a Second-Order TVD Scheme
by Pablo Druetta and Francesco Picchioni
Energies 2018, 11(9), 2280; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11092280 - 30 Aug 2018
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4035
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to present the latter and develop a numerical simulator aimed at solving a 2D domain porous medium, using the compositional approach to simulate chemical flooding processes. The simulator consists in a two-phase, multicomponent system solved by the [...] Read more.
The aim of this paper is to present the latter and develop a numerical simulator aimed at solving a 2D domain porous medium, using the compositional approach to simulate chemical flooding processes. The simulator consists in a two-phase, multicomponent system solved by the IMplicit in Pressure, Explicit in Concentration (IMPEC) approach, which can be operated under an iterative/non-iterative condition on each time-step. The discretization of the differential equations is done using a fully second order of accuracy, along with a Total Variation Diminishing (TVD) scheme with a flux limiter function. This allowed reducing the artificial diffusion and dispersion on the transport equation, improving the chemical species front tracking, decreasing the numerical influence on the recovery results. The new model was validated against both commercial and academic simulators and moreover, the robustness and stability were also tested, showing that the iterative IMPEC is fully stable, behaving as an implicit numerical scheme. The non-iterative IMPEC is conditionally stable, with a critical time-step above which numerical spurious oscillations begin to appear until the system numerically crashes. The results showed a good correspondence in different grid sizes, being largely affected by the time-step, with caused a decrease in the recovery efficiency in the iterative scheme, and the occurrence of numerical oscillations in the non-iterative one. Numerically speaking, the second-order scheme using a flux splitting TVD discretization proved to be a good approach for compositional reservoir simulation, decreasing the influence of numerical truncation errors on the results when compared to traditional, first-order linear schemes. Along with these studies, secondary recoveries in constant and random permeability fields are simulated before employing them in tertiary recovery processes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Enhanced Oil Recovery)
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22 pages, 5952 KiB  
Article
Potential of Russian Regions to Implement CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery
by Alexey Cherepovitsyn, Sergey Fedoseev, Pavel Tcvetkov, Ksenia Sidorova and Andrzej Kraslawski
Energies 2018, 11(6), 1528; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11061528 - 12 Jun 2018
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 6656
Abstract
The paper assesses the techno-economic potential of Russia to implement carbon capture and storage technologies that imply the capture of anthropogenic CO2 and its injection into geologic reservoirs for long-term storage. The focus is on CO2 enhanced oil recovery projects that [...] Read more.
The paper assesses the techno-economic potential of Russia to implement carbon capture and storage technologies that imply the capture of anthropogenic CO2 and its injection into geologic reservoirs for long-term storage. The focus is on CO2 enhanced oil recovery projects that seem to be the most economically promising option of carbon capture and storage. The novelty of the work lies in the formulation of a potential assessment method of CO2 enhanced oil recovery, which allows for establishing a connection between energy production and oil extraction from the viewpoint of CO2 supply and demand. Using linear optimization, the most promising combinations of CO2 sources and sinks are identified and an economic evaluation of these projects is carried out. Based on this information, regions of Russia are ranked according to their prospects in regards to CO2 capture and enhanced oil recovery storage. The results indicate that Russia has a significant potential to utilize its power plants as CO2 sources for enhanced oil recovery projects. It has been estimated that 71 coal-fired power plants, and 185 of the gas-fired power plants of Russia annually produce 297.1 and 309.6 Mt of CO2 that can cover 553.4 Mt of the demand of 322 Russian oil fields. At the same time, the total CO2 storage capacity of the Russian fields is estimated at 7382.6 Mt, however, due to geological and technical factors, only 22.6% can be used for CO2-EOR projects. Of the 183 potential projects identified in the regional analysis phase, 99 were found to be cost-effective, with an average unit cost of € 19.07 per ton of CO2 and a payback period of 8.71 years. The most promising of the estimated regions is characterized by a well-developed energy industry, relatively low transportation costs, numerous large and medium-sized oil fields at the final stages of development, and favorable geological conditions that minimize the cost of injection. Geographically, they are located in the North-Western, Volga, and Ural Federal districts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Enhanced Oil Recovery)
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Review

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66 pages, 4594 KiB  
Review
Brine-Dependent Recovery Processes in Carbonate and Sandstone Petroleum Reservoirs: Review of Laboratory-Field Studies, Interfacial Mechanisms and Modeling Attempts
by Adedapo N. Awolayo, Hemanta K. Sarma and Long X. Nghiem
Energies 2018, 11(11), 3020; https://doi.org/10.3390/en11113020 - 02 Nov 2018
Cited by 93 | Viewed by 6635
Abstract
Brine-dependent recovery, which involves injected water ionic composition and strength, has seen much global research efforts in the past two decades because of its benefits over other oil recovery methods. Several studies, ranging from lab coreflood experiments to field trials, indicate the potential [...] Read more.
Brine-dependent recovery, which involves injected water ionic composition and strength, has seen much global research efforts in the past two decades because of its benefits over other oil recovery methods. Several studies, ranging from lab coreflood experiments to field trials, indicate the potential of recovering additional oil in sandstone and carbonate reservoirs. Sandstone and carbonate rocks are composed of completely different minerals, with varying degree of complexity and heterogeneity, but wettability alteration has been widely considered as the consequence rather than the cause of brine-dependent recovery. However, the probable cause appears to be as a result of the combination of several proposed mechanisms that relate the wettability changes to the improved recovery. This paper provides a comprehensive review on laboratory and field observations, descriptions of underlying mechanisms and their validity, the complexity of the oil-brine-rock interactions, modeling works, and comparison between sandstone and carbonate rocks. The improvement in oil recovery varies depending on brine content (connate and injected), rock mineralogy, oil type and structure, and temperature. The brine ionic strength and composition modification are the two major frontlines that have been well-exploited, while further areas of investigation are highlighted to speed up the interpretation and prediction of the process efficiency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Enhanced Oil Recovery)
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