Comparative Study of Nanoparticles Assisted Polymer Flood and Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer Flood

Enhanced oil recovery is of increasing importance in the oil industry as more and more reservoirs approach their economic limits through primary and secondary recovery. Many of these reservoirs have a substantial portion of their oil unrecovered and trapped as residual oil. A common method of enhanced oil recovery is Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer (ASP) flooding where a solution of alkali, surfactant and polymer is injected followed by a polymer drive. On the one side, the injected surfactant, alkaline and petroleum soaps generated in situ reduce the oil-water interfacial tension, and improving the sweep efficiency; moreover, the macroscopic sweep efficiency is enhanced through improvement of the mobility ratio due to the injected polymer; On the other side, ASP flooding is a complex process since it involves chemical reactions that depend on the oil composition, water saturation, rock mineralogy, temperature, pH, etc. Furthermore, development of nanotechnology has successfully provided technical and economical viable alternatives for present materials. In this paper, a comparative simulation study is carried out and the effects of ASP flood and Nano-clay Particles Assisted Polymer flood (NPAP) on oil recovery are simulated. This paper includes a history match of one-dimensional ASP flood using an explicit chemical-flooding simulator, UTCHEM. Simulation results show that ASP flood still increase heavy oil recovery more than other chemical enhanced oil recovery methods such as polymer flood. However, NPAP flood can improve the efficiency of conventional polymer flood and, more importantly, the amount of oil recovery by the means of NPAP flood, in this specific case, can be comparable with ASP flood

کلیدواژه ها:

ASP Flood ، Nano-clay Particles ، Chemical Flood Simulator