Title: Development of a fully implicit simulator for surfactant-polymer flooding by applying the variable substitution method

Authors: Zhichun Jia; Daolun Li; Zhenggang Xue; Detang Lu

Addresses: University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China ' University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China; Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui, China ' University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China ' University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China

Abstract: A perpendicular bisection (PEBI) gridding-based two-phase five-component fully implicit simulator for polymer-surfactant flooding is proposed which utilises the substitution of variable method in the numerical calculation procedure. The substitution of variable method utilises two sets of primary variables based on the phase equilibrium states. When an oil-microemulsion system exists, the primary variables to be solved are the oil phase pressure p_o and the volume concentrations of oil, polymer, surfactant and salt in the microemulsion, i.e., C_om, C_pm, C_sm and C_bm. When a single microemulsion is formed, the primary variables are p_o, S_m, C_pm, C_sm and C_bm. A fully implicit iterative scheme is established based on the substitution of variable formulation according to oil phase disappearance or appearance which reduces the number of primary variables. The calculation speed of the new simulator is compared to a conventional fully implicit simulator, which shows that the calculation speed is significantly improved. [Received: January 2, 2017; Accepted: March 22, 2017]

Keywords: fluid mechanics in porous medium; enhanced oil recovery; EOR; reservoir simulation; phase behaviour.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOGCT.2019.099520

International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology, 2019 Vol.21 No.1, pp.1 - 25

Accepted: 22 Mar 2017
Published online: 08 May 2019 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article