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In-situ Residual Oil Saturation And Cluster Size Distribution In Sandstones After Surfactant and Polymer Flooding Imaged With X-ray Micro-computed Tomography
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, IPTC 2014: International Petroleum Technology Conference, Jan 2014, cp-395-00042
Abstract
We imaged a sandstone at connate water saturation, residual waterflood oil saturation, residual surfactant flood oil saturation and residual polymer flood oil saturation at high resolution in 3D with a micro-computed tomograph. We measured oil saturations, porosities, residual oil cluster size distributions and oil cluster surface areas on each image. We found that the waterflood and polymer flood reduced the oil saturations significantly (from 68.4% initial oil in place to 38.3% after waterflooding and 28.5% after polymer flooding). The surfactant flood was ineffective, which is probably due to the formulation we used and/or the fluid equilibration times we applied. The residual oil cluster size distributions and cluster surface area-volume relationships followed power-law relations, consistent with previous experimental measurements. We conclude that micro-computed tomography can enhance understanding of pore-scale fluid dynamics significantly.