Development of a Microfluidic Method to Study Enhanced Oil Recovery by Low Salinity Water Flooding

Marzieh Saadat; Peichun A Tsai; Tsai-Hsing Ho; Gisle Øye; Marcin Dudek

doi:10.1021/acsomega.0c02005

Development of a Microfluidic Method to Study Enhanced Oil Recovery by Low Salinity Water Flooding

ACS Omega. 2020 Jul 10;5(28):17521-17530. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.0c02005. eCollection 2020 Jul 21.

Authors

Marzieh Saadat¹, Peichun A Tsai², Tsai-Hsing Ho², Gisle Øye¹, Marcin Dudek¹

Affiliations

¹ Ugelstad Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim 7491, Norway.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton T6G 1H9, Canada.

Abstract

Microfluidics is an appealing method to study processes at rock pore scale such as oil recovery because of the similar size range. It also offers several advantages over the conventional core flooding methodology, for example, easy cleaning and reuse of the same porous network chips or the option to visually track the process. In this study, the effects of injection rate, flood volume, micromodel structure, initial brine saturation, aging, oil type, brine concentration, and composition are systematically investigated. The recovery process is evaluated based on a series of images taken during the experiment. The remaining crude oil saturation reaches a steady state after injection of a few pore volumes of the brine flood. The higher the injection rate, the higher the emulsification and agitation, leading to unstable displacement. Low salinity brine recovered more oil than the high salinity brine. Aging, initial brine saturation, and the presence of divalent ions in the flood led to a decrease in the oil recovery. Most of the tests in this study showed viscous fingering. The analysis of the experimental parameters allowed to develop a reliable and repeatable procedure for microfluidic water flooding. With the method in place, the enhanced oil recovery test developed based on different variables showed an increase of up to 2% of the original oil in place at the tertiary stage.