Advanced Strategies in Enhanced Oil Recovery: Theory and Technology

A special issue of Processes (ISSN 2227-9717). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 October 2025 | Viewed by 1118

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
College of Petroleum Engineering, Yangtze University, Wuhan 430100, China
Interests: enhanced oil recovery; heavy oil; thermal recovery
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Guest Editor
School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266580, China
Interests: low permeability; tight oil CO2 injection development; profile control and water plugging; chemical flooding
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Department of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan 430079, China
Interests: chemical flooding; CO2 storage in oil and gas reservoirs
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Water flooding is recognized as one of the most common secondary oil recovery techniques, after the primary production period, which has been widely applied for different reservoirs. However, as reservoirs enter the late development stage, reservoir heterogeneity becomes serious and the distribution of the remaining oil becomes more scattered, and traditional water flooding recovery methods have been unable to satisfy the demand for enhanced oil recovery. In view of different reservoir types, including mature water flooding reservoirs, low-permeability reservoirs, heavy oil reservoirs, and so on, different strategies in enhanced oil recovery have been developed.

This Special Issue focuses on all aspects the above challenges, particularly the following:

  • Improve oil recovery strategies for water flooding reservoirs, including water shutoff, conformance control, and so on;
  • Chemical-enhanced oil recovery strategies, including polymer flooding, surfactant flooding, combined flooding, and so on;
  • CO2 flooding and storage strategies for different reservoirs;
  • Heavy oil recovery strategies.

Prof. Dr. Hong He
Dr. Mingchen Ding
Prof. Dr. Long Yu
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • enhanced oil recovery
  • water flooding
  • CO2 flooding
  • heavy oil reservoir
  • low-permeability reservoir
  • water shutoff
  • conformance control

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

15 pages, 17211 KiB  
Article
Impact of Heterogeneity in Low-Permeability Reservoirs on Self-Diverting Acid Wormhole Formation and Acidizing Parameter Optimization
by Jun Luo, Chunlin Liu, An Liu, Xuchen Zhang and Fajian Nie
Processes 2025, 13(4), 1029; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr13041029 - 30 Mar 2025
Viewed by 297
Abstract
Carbonate rocks typically exhibit strong heterogeneity, which can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of acidification processes, and different types of acids are needed in the field to achieve various acidizing goals. This article develops a self-diverting acidizing program based on the [...] Read more.
Carbonate rocks typically exhibit strong heterogeneity, which can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of acidification processes, and different types of acids are needed in the field to achieve various acidizing goals. This article develops a self-diverting acidizing program based on the two-scale continuum model and open-source software FMOT, and investigates the influence of heterogeneity intensity on wormhole morphology and acidizing process parameters. The results indicate that different heterogeneity intensities significantly affected the morphology of the wormhole. At low intensity, the shape of the wormhole is close to a straight line, while at high intensity, it becomes tree-like. The reason for the significant impact is that the higher the heterogeneity intensity, the more obvious the dominant path within the rock, the more uneven the high viscosity zone formed, and the more obvious the turning of spent acid flow. The optimal injection rate of self-diverting acid increases with the increase in temperature. At lower injection rates, the self-diverting acid can produce more branching wormholes, and low temperatures enhance this effect, especially at high heterogeneity. Whether at a higher or lower acid injection rate, increasing the acid injection temperature appropriately is helpful to improve the acidizing efficiency. The acid injection rate and temperature should be adjusted to adapt to the pore heterogeneity of different intensities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Strategies in Enhanced Oil Recovery: Theory and Technology)
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21 pages, 5536 KiB  
Article
Insights into Enhanced Oil Recovery by Viscosity Reduction Combination Flooding System for Conventional Heavy Oil Reservoir
by Hong He, Wenhui Ning, Haihua Pei, Ruping Chen, Yuhang Tian, Yibo Liu and Qingying Zuo
Processes 2025, 13(3), 618; https://doi.org/10.3390/pr13030618 - 21 Feb 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 652
Abstract
To settle the problems of high energy consumption and carbon emissions in the thermal recovery of heavy oil, the viscosity reduction combination flooding (V-RCF) method is proposed to enhance oil recovery for conventional heavy oil reservoirs. The performance of the viscosity reduction combination [...] Read more.
To settle the problems of high energy consumption and carbon emissions in the thermal recovery of heavy oil, the viscosity reduction combination flooding (V-RCF) method is proposed to enhance oil recovery for conventional heavy oil reservoirs. The performance of the viscosity reduction combination flooding (V-RCF) system composed of polymer, emulsifying surfactant, and ultra-low interfacial tension surfactant was evaluated. The interfacial tension between oil and water continues to be maintained at 10−3 mN/m as the concentration of ultra-low interfacial tension surfactant(L) increases. The viscosity reduction rate of the V-RCF system reaches over 95%. A series of parallel sand pack flooding experiments were carried out to investigate enhanced oil recovery. The enhanced oil recovery (EOR) efficiency of the V-RCF under various injection modes was compared, and the best injection mode was suggested. The incremental oil recovery of the V-RCF system under multiple slug injection modes is higher than that under single slug injection mode. The optimum slug injection sequence of the V-RCF system is injecting a polymer-emulsifying surfactant(P+R) slug firstly, and then, injecting a polymer-ultra-low interfacial tension surfactant(P+L) slug. The optimum slug size ratio of polymer-emulsifying surfactant(P+R) slug and polymer-ultra-low interfacial tension surfactant(P+L) slug is 2:1. The microfluidic flooding results have further confirmed that the best recovery rate is achieved when the slug ratio is 2:1 from a microscopic perspective. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Strategies in Enhanced Oil Recovery: Theory and Technology)
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