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Micro and Nanoscale Transport Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G
2G8, Canada
Optical Diagnostic Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G8, Canada
ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on nding ways to improve the traditional core ooding experimental setup that has been used
by the reservoir engineers over the past decades. The new proposed setup can be used in contemporary studies related to
enhanced oil recovery. This setup has a possibility of using dierent ooding agents, e.g., surfactant, polymer, emulsion, oil and
water. It also includes an automated euent analysis, which has been developed to provide estimates on oil recovery eciency.
For validation purposes, the core ooding setup has been tested with an unconsolidated one-dimensional sand pack as a porous
medium. Traditional water ooding experiments with paran oil and water were conducted at rst. Also, two types of emulsion
ooding techniques were tested for the sand packs: the direct emulsion ooding and the water ooding followed by the emulsion
ooding as an example to exploit the capability of the new setup to successfully perform enhanced oil recovery techniques.
Hence, this setup provides a valuable tool for the reservoir engineers to test the dierent ooding strategies in a laboratory scale
experiment, before committing to huge resources in terms of man-power and cost in actual drilling operations in oil reservoirs.
INTRODUCTION
The ever pressing need for exploring new hydrocarbon
resources in some of the unexplored regions of the world1
has made oil and gas industry to compete with each other and
develop new and ecient processes for extracting this precious
commodity out of the natural reservoirs. However, this is a
huge undertaking for the overall industry and, for instance,
China alone spends close to 13 billion dollars each year for oil
and gas exploration,2 which involves selection of preferred sites,
drilling operations including the appropriate design of injection
and production wells, etc. In recent years, the cost has also
escalated due to the tendency of the industry to try dierent
ooding uids (chemicals, surfactants, polymers, etc.)35 to
displace the resident oil phase and achieve record level of oil
production (92 mb/d).6 The obvious question that arises is that
whether there can be ways one can predict the oil recovery
process for new geological formations and more importantly
the applicability of a new ooding strategy (i.e., combination of
wells, ooding uids, etc.) in a laboratory scale without
embarking on a costly venture of direct drilling in oil elds.
To this extent, the oil and gas industry heavily relied on
laboratory core ooding experiments, where a core pack, often
unconsolidated sand particles710 or, in some cases, consolidated cores (sandstone and carbonate outcrops),1114
mimicking the porous natural reservoir, are traditionally
ooded with an injection uid and the resultant output in
terms of oil recovery is measured. However, this age old core
ooding system and the process need to be made more robust,
automated, and more in tune with the advancements of uid
machineries of the twenty-rst century, rather than relying on a
core ooding system, which was introduced way back in early
1930s.15 This is more of the need of the hour, particularly when
the industry is exploring new options for ooding the existing
oil elds abandoned after the primary recovery process.16 Here,
we provide a critical solution to this pressing need for the oil
and gas industry by providing a robust, versatile, precise, and
2014 American Chemical Society
May 7, 2014
July 2, 2014
August 8, 2014
August 8, 2014
dx.doi.org/10.1021/ie501866e | Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2014, 53, 1349713505
Article
year
upstream
downstream
used uids
1987
1994
1999
2001
2004
2007
2007
2010
2012
2013
2014
metering pump
syringe pumps with PA
displacement pump Quizix with PA
syringe pump
displacement pump with PA
syringe pump with PA
dual piston syringe pump with PA
syringe pump with PA
syringe pump with PA
syringe pump with PA
syringe pump with PA
n/a
multiport rotary valve with vials
fraction collector and separator
fraction collector
euent condenser with collector
oil sample collector with gas ow meter
fraction collector
fraction collector
fraction collector
euent sample collector
fraction collector with centrifuge tubes
limits the type of liquids that can possibly be injected into the
core, as the inner surface of the pistoncylinder assembly of the
syringe pump is susceptible to corrosion. The piston
accumulator size limits the volume of uid that can be
continuously injected during ooding experiments and one
needs to perform a priori calculations to determine the size and
specication of the piston accumulator to perform a given core
ooding study. Table 1 also suggests that the fraction collector
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used for containing and packing the medium. The core holder,
shown here, is designed to perform one-dimensional core
ooding experiments. However, any other two-dimensional10
or three-dimensional7,8 core holders, as and when available, can
be plugged into the system through appropriate connections to
3.175 mm (1/8 in) stainless steel tube. The dimensions of the
core holder used here as an example are length = 284 mm
(11.18 in) and diameter = 38.1 mm (1.5 in). This design
incorporates minimal uid leakage between the inner surface of
the coreholder and the sand pack. At the same time, it also
reduces the dead volumes at the inlet and outlet sides of the
sand pack due to redesigned entrance region, shown in Figure
3. The entrance region incorporates modications to the
patents published back in 1984 and 1985.30,31 It combines the
advantages of both patents and thereby replaces/modies the
distribution plates as per current needs. A sand-blasted plastic
tube is installed inside the core holder to prevent such uid
leakage. The distribution plugs, located at the two ends of the
core holder, have built-in stainless steel medium with the mesh
size of 40 m and 1.59 mm (1/16 in.) thickness and
distribution plate printed in a rapid prototype machine. This
combination redistributes the liquid across the cross section
and reduces dead volumes. The design for the distribution
plates was optimized by performing separate simulations using
commercial software. Particularly, the size of the holes in the
radial direction30 was optimized to guarantee uniform ow
distribution through the porous medium with known range of
permeability and porosity. For pressure monitoring, there are
three pressure sensors (FP2000 series, Honeywell International
Inc.), TP-2, TP-1, and dP-1, to measure the inlet pressure at the
upstream, the outlet pressure at the downstream, and
dierential pressure across the porous media.
The downstream section has an euent management system
that allows it to quantify dierent fractions of euents removed
from the core block. The mass fraction of each component
needs to be calculated in order to estimate the amount of oil
recovered, which is often the ultimate goal for such a core
ooding system. The euent management system has a mass
ow meter and a fraction collector. The fraction collector uses
graded test tubes with 15 mL volume each. The error in a
measuring volume of liquid collected in a test tube (430055,
Cole-Parmer Canada Inc.), used for checking the euent
Figure 2. Exploded view of the core holder (1) cap, (2) end plugs
body, (3) body, (4) internal surface, and (5) tting 1/8 NPT to 3.175
mm (1/8 in.) tube).
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Figure 3. End plugs of the biaxial core holder. (a) Isometric view of end plugs, (b) end plug assembled, (c) cross section view of single end plug (1)
sandblasted internal surface, (2) stainless steel lter, (3) 3D-printed plate, (4) strain ring, (5) end plugs body, and (6) core holders body.
Article
Figure 5. Graphical user interface (GUI) to perform automation for the core ooding system.
Article
known mass was packed inside the void volume of the core
holder (324 cm3) using a vibration table (VP-181, FMC
Technologies) with the vibrator controller (Syntron Power
Pulse AC, FMC Technologies) set at maximum level. The core
holder with one opened end, containing the inner plastic tube,
was placed vertically on the vibration table. The sand was
poured inside the core holder continuously up to the top of the
internal tube. The core holder was kept for 5 min on a turned
table to let the sand settle and form a dense medium. A rod
with diameter equal to the internal diameter of the plastic tube
was used to compress the sand to produce a dense pack.
Each pack was characterized for porosity and permeability,
which were obtained prior to each ooding experiment. To
obtain a porosity value (pore volume) for each pack, a vacuum
pump (117, Labconco Corp.) was connected to one side and a
vacuum gauge was connected to another side of the core
holder. The core holder was evacuated to 4 kPa absolute (28 in.
mercury gauge) over 30 min. Then the vacuum pump was
disconnected and a tank lled with a known volume of water
was connected to the core holder to allow ow of water into the
core holder. The remaining volume of water in the tank was
recorded using double metric scale glass cylinder (250 mL
Brand 3025, Pyrex). From this measurements, the volume of
water occupied by the pore space can be calculated, which
provides the value of the porosity of the sand pack. In addition,
the porosity was calculated using the mass of packed sand, void
volume inside the core holder, and bulk density of silica sand37
(2.65 g/cm3). Pore volumes (PV), the volume of uid within
the packed core holder, were in the range from 113.4 to 120.0
cm3. Obtained numbers from the two approaches are shown in
Table 2.
porosity, % by
water/by mass
measurements
absolute
permeability,
Darcy
permeability
with residual
water, Darcy
residual water
saturation after
oil saturation Swi
37/35
10.2
6.25
0.02
36/36
19.8
37/35.8
11.3
6.30
0.06
35.8/33.4
11.3
7.90
0.06
11.2
0.18
Figure 6. Comparison of data obtained from mass ow meter and test tube fractionation during water ooding. Vertical axis, recovered mixture/oil
recorded by mass ow meter; horizontal axis, recovered mixture/oil measured with test tubes.
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Figure 7. Comparison of data obtained from mass ow meter and test tube fractionation during emulsion ooding. Vertical axis, recovered mixture/
oil recorded by mass ow meter; horizontal axis, recovered mixture/oil measured with test tubes.
Q curtstep
60
j = oil or water
(1)
If the density was larger than the reference level ref, the
recorded volume (eq 1) was added to the water value Vwater,rec
and the oil value Voil,rec was kept unchanged. Otherwise, it was
vice versa. This approach was also used for the emulsion
ooding experiments, the values above the reference level
represented water and emulsion phases. The volume of liquid,
which ows through the mass ow meter each second at the
ow rate, 0.5 cm3/min, is approximately 8.3 103 mL.
Figure 6 contains data points obtained during the process of
water ooding for dierent runs, including the one where the
emulsion ooding was followed after the water ooding step
(Run #4). Data points for produced water, shown in Figure 6a,
follow the 45 line trend. Figure 6b shows the similar trends for
the recovered oil in the euent stream. This highlights that
measurements from the mass ow meter can be used for online
determination of the euent fraction.
Results obtained for the two emulsion ooding methods are
presented in Figure 7. In Figure 7a, the results of produced
mixture of emulsion and water are depicted and Figure 7b
shows the volume of recovered oil measured by the two
Figure 8. Recovery comparison for studied cases: Run #1 and Run #2,
water ooding; Run #3, direct emulsion ooding; Run #4, water
ooding followed by emulsion ooding.
Article
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors acknowledge Dr. Patrick Brunelle from Quadrise
Canada Inc. for his valuable inputs and providing emulsion for
experiments. Financial assistance from NSERC CRD (Grant
No. CRDPJ 399500-10) is acknowledged here.
REFERENCES
CONCLUSION
A new core ooding experimental setup has been constructed
to improve on the existing system, which has been in use for
several decades. The developed setup allows us to test
enhanced oil recovery techniques in a more ecient time
manner. The system was equipped with the up-to-date
techniques and hardware available in uid measurement
systems. An automated euent analysis incorporating properties (mass ow rate and density) measured by mass ow meters
has been developed. This allowed the replacement of the
traditional fraction collector in the downstream section for
online determination of euent composition. The entire
experimental setup is also monitored and controlled through
a custom built software.
The core ooding experiments with unconsolidated sand
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Here, two dierent strategies for emulsion ooding have been
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