Steam injection with added surface active chemicals is one of general EOR
processes aimed to recover residual oil after primary production processes. It has been
demonstrated that, after waterflooding, an oil swept area can be increased by steam
surfactant flow due to the reduced steam override effect as well as reduced interfacial
tension between oil and water in the formation. To investigate the ability to improve
recovery of 20.5oAPI California heavy oil with steam surfactant injection, several
experiments with a one-dimensional model were performed.
Two experimental models with similar porous media, fluids, chemicals, as well
as injection and production conditions, were applied. The first series of experiments
were carried out in a vertical cylindrical injection cell with dimensions of 7.4 cm x 67
cm. The second part of experiment was conducted using a horizontal tube model with
dimensions of 3.5 cm x 110.5 cm. The horizontal model with a smaller diameter than the
vertical injection cell is less subject to channel formation and is therefore more applicable for the laboratory scale modeling of the one-dimensional steam injection
process.
Nonionic surfactant Triton X-100 was coinjected into the steam flow. For both
series of experimental work with vertical and horizontal injection cells, the concentration
of Triton X-100 surfactant solution used was chosen 3.0 wt%. The injection rates were
set to inject the same 0.8 pore volumes of steam for the vertical model and 1.8 pore
volumes of steam for horizontal model.
The steam was injected at superheated conditions of 200oC and pressure of 100
psig. The liquid produced from the separator was sampled periodically and treated to
determine oilcut and produced oil properties. The interfacial tension (IFT) of the
produced oil and water were measured with an IFT meter and compared to that for the
original oil. The experimental study demonstrated that the average incremental oil
recovery with steam surfactant flood is 7 % of the original oil-in-place above that with
pure steam injection.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-05-7650 |
| Date | 2010 May 1900 |
| Creators | Sunnatov, Dinmukhamed |
| Contributors | Mamora, Daulat |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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