1887

Abstract

Summary

In this work we present a non-standard model for microbial enhanced oil recovery including the oil-water interfacial area. Including the interfacial area in the model, we eliminate the hysteresis in the capillary pressure relationship. One of the characteristics that a surfactant should have, it is biological production at the oil-water interface. Therefore, we consider the production rate of surfactants not only as a function of the nutrient concentration, but also the interfacial area. To solve the model equations, we use an efficient and robust linearization scheme that considers a linear approximation of the capillary pressure gradient. A comprehensive, 1D implementation based on two-point flux approximation of the model is achieved. We consider different parameterizations for the interfacial tension and residual oil saturation reduction.

Illustrative numerical simulations are presented, where we study the spatial distribution and evolution in time of the average pressure, water saturation, interfacial area, capillary pressure, residual oil saturation and bacterial, nutrient and surfactant concentrations. Inclusion of the interfacial area in the model leads to different predictions of oil recovery. The model can also be used to design new experiments contributing to a better understanding and optimization of MEOR.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201700254
2017-04-24
2024-04-19
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Bang, H.W. and Caudle, B.H.
    [1984] Modeling of a micellar/polymer process. SPE J. 24(6), 617–627.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Coats, K.H.
    [1980] An equation of state compositional model. Soc. Pet. Eng. 20, 363–376.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Donaldson, E.C., Chilingarian, G.V. and Yen, T.F.
    [1989] Enhanced Oil Recovery, II: Processes and Operations. Elsevier.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Islam, M.R.
    (1990) Mathematical modeling of microbial enhanced oil recovery, SPE, 20480, 159–168.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Joekar-Niasar, V. and Hassanizadeh, S.M.
    [2012] Uniqueness of specific interfacial area-capillary pressure-saturation relationship under non-equilibrium conditions in two-phase porous media flow. Transp. Porous Media, 94(2), 465–486.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Kim, S.B.
    [2006] Numerical analysis of bacterial transport in saturated porous media. Hydrol. Process., 20, 1177–1186.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Kou, J. and Sun, S.
    [2010] On iterative IMPES formulation for two phase flow with capillarity in heterogeneous porous media. Int. J. Numer. Anal. Model., series B, 1(1), 20–40.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Lake, L.W.
    [1989] Enhanced Oil Recovery. Prentice-Hall Inc, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, USA.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Lazar, I. and Petrisor, I.G. and Yen, T.F.
    [2007] Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR). Petroleum Science and Technology, 25, 1353–1366.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Li, J., Liu, J., Trefry, M.G., Park, J., Liu, K., Haq, B., Johnston, C.D. and Volk, H.
    [2011] Interactions of Microbial-Enhanced Oil Recovery Processes. Transp. Porous Media, 87(1), 77–104.
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Li, Y., Abriola, L.M., Phelan, T.J., Ramsburg, C.A. and Pennell, K.D.
    [2007] Experimental and numerical validation of the total trapping number for prediction of DNAPL mobilization. Environ. Sci. Technol. 41(23), 8135–8141.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. List, F. and Radu, F.A.
    [2016] A study on iterative methods for solving Richards’ equation. Computational Geosciences, 20(2), 341–353.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Hassanizadeh, S.M. and Gray, W.G.
    [1993] Thermodynamic basis of capillary pressure in porous media. Water Resour. Res., 29, 3389–3405.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Nielsen, S.M., Shapiro, A.A., Michelsen, M.L. and Stenby, E.H.
    [2010] 1D Simulations for Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery with Metabolite Partitioning. Transp. Porous Med85, 785–802.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Nielsen, S.M., Shapiro, A.A., Stenby, E.H., and Michelsen, M.L.
    [2010]. Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery - Advanced Reservoir Simulation. Technical University of Denmark (DTU) Kgs.Lyngby, Denmark.
  16. Niessner, J. and Hassanizadeh, S.M.
    [2008] A model for two-phase flow in porous media including fluid-fluid interfacial area. Water Resour. Res., 44(8).
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Nordbotten, J.M. and Celia, M.A.
    [2011] Geological storage of CO2: modeling approaches for large-scale simulation. John Wiley And Sons.
  18. Patel, I., Borgohain, S., Kumar, M., Rangarajan, V., Somasundaran, P., and Sen, R.
    [2015] Recent developments in microbial enhanced oil recovery. Renew. Sust. Ener. Rev., 52, 1539–1558.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Porter, M.L, Wildenschild, D., Grant, G. and Gerhard, J.I.
    [2010] Measurement and prediction of the relationship between capillary pressure, saturation, and interfacial area in a NAPL-water-glass bead system. Water Resour. Res., 46(8).
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Radu, F.A., Nordbotten, J.M., Pop, I.S. and Kumar, K.
    [2015] A robust linearization scheme for finite volume based discretizations for simulation of two-phase flow in porous media. J. Comput. and Appl. Math., 289(1), 134–141.
    [Google Scholar]
http://instance.metastore.ingenta.com/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201700254
Loading
/content/papers/10.3997/2214-4609.201700254
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error