Impact of Rock Heterogeneity on Interactions of Microbial-Enhanced Oil Recovery Processes

Jian Li, Jishan Liu*, Michael G. Trefry, Keyu Liu, Jungho Park, Bashirul Haq, Colin D. Johnston, Michael B. Clennell, Herbert Volk

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Residual oil saturation reduction and microbial plugging are two crucial factors in microbial-enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) processes. In our previous study, the residual saturation was defined as a nonlinear function of the trapping number, and an explicit relation between the residual oil saturation and the trapping number was incorporated into a fully coupled biological (B) and hydrological (H) finite element model. In this study, the BH model is extended to consider the impact of rock heterogeneity on microbial-enhanced oil recovery phenomena. Numerical simulations of core flooding experiments are performed to demonstrate the influences of different parameters controlling the onset of oil mobilization. X-ray CT core scans are used to construct numerical porosity-permeability distributions for input to the simulations. Results show clear fine-scale fingering processing, and that trapping phenomena have significant effects on residual oil saturation and oil recovery in heterogeneous porous media. Water contents and bacterial distributions for heterogeneous porous media are compared with those for homogenous porous media. The evolution of the trapping number distribution is directly simulated and visualized. It is shown that the oil recovery efficiency of EOR/MEOR will be lower in heterogeneous media than in homogeneous media, largely due to the difficulty in supplying surfactant to unswept low-permeability zones. However, MEOR also provides efficient plugging along high-permeability zones which acts to increase sweep efficiency in heterogeneous media. Thus, MEOR may potentially be more suited for highly heterogeneous media than conventional EOR.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)373-396
Number of pages24
JournalTransport in Porous Media
Volume92
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2012
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Acknowledgements This study was supported by WA:ERA and by CSIRO Wealth from Oceans National Research Flagship. The X-ray CT image of a horizontal slice of sandstone was provided by CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering. Special thanks are due to several anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

Keywords

  • MEOR
  • Residual oil saturation
  • Rock heterogeneity
  • Simulation
  • Trapping number

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Catalysis
  • General Chemical Engineering

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