Impact of Anisotropic Permeability on Oil Recovery Using SP Flooding: A Simulation Approach

The study of flow through porous media has been of cardinal gravity in various oil and gas applications like enhanced oil recovery (EOR), acidizing, fracturing, etc. It is in apprehension to this need that core modeling has become prevalent to understand the flow through porous media. Our study aims at simulating and analyzing the effect of surfactant flooding through anisotropic permeability conditions in a subsurface environment. The simulations are carried out on a ۲-D model of the experimental core and was finely meshed for better convergence. The natural anionic surfactant extracted from Madhuca longifolia oil and Partially Hydrolyzed Polyacryl Amide polymer have beenreferenced for the physicochemical properties used in the simulations. Several sets of directional permeabilities are introduced in the vertical and horizontal direction for a single absolute permeability and porosity system. Results indicate a trend of oil recovery upright with increasing vertical permeability. A lower areal sweep efficiency, as well as early breakthrough, is observed in models with high horizontal permeabilities. With the ingress of computational fluid dynamics in the oil and gas industry, a more comprehensive understanding of flow patterns allows improved EOR process designs. Our research exploits it to model multiphase flow through an anisotropic permeability medium and its effect on oil recovery.

کلیدواژه ها:

Anisotropic Permeability ، Surfactant Polymer Flooding ، Computational Fluid Dynamics ، Enhanced Oil Recovery ، Core Modelling