Mingchen Ding

Mechanisms of Enhanced Oil Recovery by Surfactant-Induced Wettability Alteration

Different measurements were conducted to study the mechanisms of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) by surfactant-induced wettability alteration. The adhesion work could be reduced by the surfactant-induced wettability alteration from oil-wet conditions to water-wet conditions. Surfactant-induced wettability alteration has a great effect on the relative permeabilities of oil and water. The relative permeability of the oil phase increases with the increase of the water-wetness of the solid surface. Seepage laws of oil and water are greatly affected by surfactant-induced wettability alteration. Water flows forward along the pore wall in the water-wet rocks and moves forward along the center of the pores in the oil-wet rocks during the surfactant flooding. For the intermediate-wet system, water uniformly moves forward and the contact angle between the oil–water interface and the pore surface is close to 90°. The direction of capillary force is consistent with the direction of water flooding for the water-wet surface. While for the oil-wet surface, the capillary force direction is opposite to the water-flooding direction. The highest oil recovery by water flooding is obtained at close to neutral wetting conditions and the minimal oil recovery occurs under oil-wet conditions. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Experimental Study on Stability and Improving Sweep Efficiency with Microfoam in Heterogeneous Porous Media

In this paper, we attempted to prepare microfoam by using a sandpack filled with glass beads with co-flowing gas and foaming solution, the microfoam stability and effectiveness in improving profile control capacity at micromodel and pore media were evaluated by micromodel tests and double-core experiments. The results of micromodel tests showed that microfoam stability was increased with increasing xanthan gum concentration due to a higher solution viscosity and viscoelasticity of liquid film. The xanthan gum-stabilized microfoam had a longer propagation distance through the low permeable region of heterogeneous micromodel at time of breakthrough than common microfoam, the optimum performance of microfoam for fluid diversion was multiple bubble trapping and mobilization rather than lamella division. According to the results of double-core experiments, the microfoam could plug the high permeability sandpack and improve the sweep efficiency in the low permeability sandpack, which could improve the water injection profile of porous media effectively. The increase in profile control effects had a good correspondence with the increase of xanthan gum concentration. The presented results were useful in understanding and designing microfoam injection in reservoirs for enhanced oil recovery. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Mutual Interactions of CO2/Oil and Natural Gas/Oil Systems and Their Effects on the EOR Process

Mutual interactions between oil and gas are critical factors affecting the gas enhancing oil recovery (EOR) process. Focusing on CO2/oil and natural gas/oil systems, their interactions are researched and compared by extraction capacity and solubility measurement experiments. Core flood tests are also implemented to determine the effects of interactions on oil recovery. Results show that CO2 can extract more light oil from the original and its extraction efficiency can reach 59.3% at 46 MPa, whereas that of natural gas is only 7.3%. However, heavy components content and viscosity of the residual oil processed by CO2 increases significantly because of extraction, while natural gas does not affect the composition of the residual so remarkably. With increased pressure, solubility of CO2 and natural gas in a light oil present a linear growth trend with similar rate, but the former is greater than the latter by about 130m3/m3. Core flood tests show that, for the continuous gas injection in the secondary oil recovery process, recovery of CO2 flood is about 20% higher than that of natural gas due to the late breakthrough of CO2, as most of the crude oil is produced before breakthrough.

The Effects of Initial Gas Content of the Oil on Recovery by Natural Gas Flood

Effects of initial gas content in oil (IGC) on oil properties and interactions between oil and natural gas were firstly studied by measurements of oil viscosity, interfacial tension (IFT) between oil and gas, and continual dissolution capacity (CDC) of natural gas in oil, which were the main factors affecting oil recovery. Secondly, core flood tests using the oils with different IGC were conducted, so that effects of IGC on oil recovery could be known. Finally, reasons why IGC could influence oil recovery were mechanistically analyzed according to the breakthrough data of natural gas. The results show that, with increased IGC, oil viscosity decreased linearly and IFT was also reduced, but the CDC of natural gas in oil was weakened. Oil recovery of natural gas flood decreased obviously with increased IGC, which is mainly due to the getting-earlier breakthrough of natural gas resulting from the reduced CDC of natural gas in oil and the consequently weakened capacity of oil to dissolve the fingering gas. So for the light oils that are similar to the experimental samples, the lower the IGC was, the higher the oil recovery of natural gas flood was.

Interaction between polymer and anionic/nonionic surfactants and its mechanism of enhanced oil recovery

ABSTRACT Various experimental methods were used to investigate interaction between polymer and anionic/nonionic surfactants and mechanisms of enhanced oil recovery by anionic/nonionic surfactants in the present paper. The complex surfactant molecules are adsorbed in the mixed micelles or aggregates formed by the hydrophobic association of hydrophobic groups of polymers, making the surfactant molecules at oil-water interface reduce and the value of interfacial tension between oil and water increase. A dense spatial network structure is formed by the interaction between the mixed aggregates and hydrophobic groups of the polymer molecular chains, making the hydrodynamic volume of the aggregates and the viscosity of the polymer solution increase. Because of the formation of the mixed adsorption layer at oil and water interface by synergistic effect, ultra-low interfacial tension (∼2.0 × 10−3 mN/m) can be achieved between the novel surfactant system and the oil samples in this paper. Because of hydrophobic interaction, wettability alteration of oil-wet surface was induced by the adsorption of the surfactant system on the solid surface. Moreover, the studied surfactant system had a certain degree of spontaneous emulsification ability (D50 = 25.04 µm) and was well emulsified with crude oil after the mechanical oscillation (D50 = 4.27 µm). GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Migration-plugging properties and plugging mechanism of microfoam

ABSTRACT To gain a better understanding of the migration-plugging properties and plugging mechanism of microfoam, micromodel tests were conducted to investigate the factors controlling the bubble size and plugging mechanism of microfoam. The resistance factor, plugging ratio, and matching factor between average bubble diameter of microfoam and pore-throat diameter of core were introduced to characterize the migration-plugging properties of microfoam by core displacement experiments. The results showed that the average bubble diameter of microfoam could be tuned from 8.6 to 57.9 µm by changing the gas liquid ratio and the sandpack foam generator permeability. Microfoam showed both better injectivity and deep plugging capacity when the matching factor was 1.35–1.87 and the gas liquid ratio was 1:2–1:1. Microfoam would create a temporary blocking zone in the high permeable region through bubble accumulation, and the subsequent microfoam would flow through the low permeable region directly or by means of elastic deformation. With the increase of the gas liquid ratio, the flow pattern of the microfoam was changed from dispersed and isolated bubbles to dense and surface contact bubbles. The blocking mode of microfoam at the pore-throat was shown to shift from intermittent plugging to continuous plugging, leading to the enhancement of plugging capacity and deformability of microfoam. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Pore-Scale Studies on the Stability of Microfoam and the Effect of Parameters on Its Bubble Size

This paper presents a new method to prepare microfoam with excellent stability and high by using a sandpack foam generator. The micromorphology of microfoam were analyzed, and average bubble diameter and uniformity of microfoam were studied by microscope. The stability of xanthan gum-stabilized microfoam and common microfoam at the pore scale was also compared. The results showed that a highly uniform microfoam ranging in size from 10 to 100 µm in diameter with a variable coefficient less than 10% was successfully prepared. The bubble size of the microfoam could be controlled by solution viscosity, gas and liquid flow rate, temperature, and backpressure. The bubble size of microfoam decreased and became uniform with the increase of solution viscosity, total flow rate, and backpressure. The bubble size increased slightly and became non-uniform with the increase of temperature, while the concentration of foaming agent had little effect on the bubble size when above 5000 mg/L. The xanthan gum in the solution increased the viscosity and thickness of liquid membrane, so xanthan gum-stabilized microfoam maintained better stability within microconfined media than common microfoam under condition of 160 g/L salinity, 90°C, and 6 MPa backpressure. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

Variation of Crude Oil Physical Properties and Oil Recovery of Natural Gas Flood Under Different Pressures

ABSTRACT For the gas flood process, crude oil physical properties including oil volume and viscosity would be greatly changed resulting from gas solution and extraction. First, solubility of natural gas in oil and brine was measured and compared. Meanwhile, the resulting oil expansion and viscosity reduction were experimentally tested. Second, oil viscosity increase due to extraction was studied by extraction experiments. Finally, oil recovery of natural gas and propane-enriched natural gas flood was studied under different pressures. Results show that solubility of natural gas in oil is dozens of times of that in brine. Variation of crude oil physical properties during natural gas injection mainly includes the remarkable volume expansion and viscosity reduction caused by gas dissolution into oil, and the oil volume shrinkage and viscosity increase caused by extraction are not so significant. The oil recovery of natural gas flood grows linearly with increased injection pressure and gas solubility in oil, but is still less than 90% even at 55 MPa, which indicates immiscible flood at 55 MPa. Addition of propane to natural gas is proved to be helpful for enhancing oil recovery and achieving miscibility.