| EPSRC Reference: |
EP/V002937/1 |
| Title: |
Foam Improved Oil Recovery: Effects of Flow Reversal |
| Principal Investigator: |
Lue, Dr L |
| Other Investigators: |
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| Researcher Co-Investigators: |
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| Project Partners: |
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| Department: |
Chemical and Process Engineering |
| Organisation: |
University of Strathclyde |
| Scheme: |
Standard Research |
| Starts: |
01 August 2021 |
Ends: |
31 December 2023 |
Value (£): |
256,728
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| EPSRC Research Topic Classifications: |
| Continuum Mechanics |
Numerical Analysis |
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| EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications: |
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| Related Grants: |
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| Panel History: |
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Summary on Grant Application Form |
The context of this project is improved oil recovery.
In petroleum extraction operations, only a fraction of the oil manages
to flow out of a reservoir under the reservoir's own pressure.
After that, petroleum engineers resort to injecting fluids into the
reservoir to try to push out remaining oil.
Foam (consisting of bubbles of gas dispersed in aqueous surfactant
liquid) is a promising candidate injection fluid to achieve that.
Because oil and gas reservoirs are difficult to access (being
underground and often in harsh environments), it is generally not
possible to observe directly how an injected foam flows inside them.
Having a mathematical model of the reservoir flow is therefore
very valuable.
This project will develop one such model, so called ``pressure-driven
growth'', which is particularly computationally efficient, as it
focusses just on a foam front as it propagates through the reservoir,
rather than on the state of the entire reservoir away from the front.
Despite its computational efficiency, the pressure-driven growth model
currently has a number of limitations.
One such limitation is that the model is not currently able to
describe a situation in which the foam front undergoes a sudden change
in direction.
This is an issue since, during foam improved oil recovery, foam that
is already within the reservoir after a period of foam injection into
a given well, may change its direction of motion if a new adjacent
injection well is brought online.
The purpose of this project is to adapt the pressure-driven growth
model to describe situations such as this.
However in order to do this, we need first to explore another model
(namely so called ``fractional flow'' theory) which underpins
pressure-driven growth.
Fractional flow theory actually contains a finer level of detail than
pressure-driven growth does, providing very specific information about
exactly what is happening at a foam front at which gas and liquid
meet.
Such information includes how gas and liquid fraction profiles vary
across the foam front, how thick the front is, and how mobile it is:
all this information then feeds into parameters governing the less
detailed description given by pressure-driven growth.
Our aim therefore is to explore how fractional flow theory responds to
changes in flow directions, and to use the fractional flow results to
re-parameterise pressure-driven growth.
Having achieved this, our objective will be to test the
re-parameterised pressure-driven growth model in a number of petroleum
engineering situations that involve flow direction changes.
Results from the model will also be compared against a much more
computationally intensive ``entire reservoir'' approach, which is
conventionally employed in petroleum engineering.
The main application area that will benefit is of course oil and gas,
with the oil and gas industry managing to recover more fluids and
hence generate more revenue from existing sites.
In certain cases, e.g. for very mature oil fields, employing foam
improved oil recovery might even make the difference between keeping a
field open or needing to shut it down.
By using modelling tools predicting how foam improved oil recovery
proceeds, oil companies will be able to plan and optimise operations,
prior to performing any costly drilling, thereby limiting the need to
resort to trial and error approaches.
Although benefits of the project focus mostly on oil and gas, wider
benefits are also anticipated.
The front propagation models that we will study for foam fronts in oil
reservoirs are remarkably similar to models governing a number of
other systems, including mechanics of solid-liquid suspensions,
supersonic flow through air, spread of epidemics, pedestrian flow and
fire front propagation, amongst others.
New insights into other systems such as these can therefore derive
from the project.
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Key Findings |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Potential use in non-academic contexts |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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Impacts |
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| Description |
This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk |
| Summary |
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| Date Materialised |
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Sectors submitted by the Researcher |
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This information can now be found on Gateway to Research (GtR) http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk
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| Project URL: |
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| Further Information: |
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| Organisation Website: |
http://www.strath.ac.uk |