Heat conduction and liberation of porous rock formation associated with fines migration in oil reservoir during waterflooding

Abstract

Abstract Permeability damage due to fines migration will impair the well productivity, which ultimately ruin the well life and creates economic loss. In clay bearing oil and gas fields, fine particles that resting on the rock surface are under the regime of the four forces, namely, electrostatic, gravity, drag, and lift. Former two forces keep the fines attached to the rock surface, while the latter two forces contribute in the detachment of fine particle from rock surface/pore wall. Fines are also detached and migrated due to permeating fluid that are strained in the pore throat during suspension transport. Thereby, declining the permeability level and reducing the oil and gas flow, and water-cut. In reservoir engineering viewpoint, thermal conduction is the transfer of heat from the source or surrounding rock to reservoir rock or it is an ability of porous rock to pass and distribute the heat to pore walls. In contrast, heat rejection is the liberation of heat energy from the porous surface to the pore space or surroundings due to invasion of external fluid to pore wall that in turn detaches the fines from pore wall and lead to a suspension flow in the interspace of the porous rocks. This type of modelling should be applied against fines displacement in oil reservoirs during waterflooding. Hence, this paper presents classical heat and mass transfer theory based analytical modelling to investigate the effects of waterflooding on migration of fine particles in oil reservoirs. Additionally, experiments were conducted to validate these fines behaviors against the analytical cum thermodynamic models, and it showed good correlation.