During microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) processes, the interaction between injection water (IW) and formation water (FW) salinity causes in-situ salinity variation which affects the final oil recovery. The present study explicitly quantifies the Original Oil in Place (OOIP) recovered for different IW and FW salinity conditions through numerical simulation. Based on simulation results, user-friendly empirical correlations were deduced to quickly estimate the OOIP. The results suggest that the OOIP increases drastically in all reservoirs with any initial FW salinity as the adopted salinity of IW is lowered. The study would serve as a tool for making reservoir management decisions. © 2017 Taylor &amp; Francis Group, LLC.

Govindarajan Suresh Kumar

Department of Ocean Engineering

P. Sivasankar

Models

Oil well flooding

Porous materials

RESERVOIR MANAGEMENT

Water injection

Empirical correlations

Empirical relations

INJECTION WATER

MICROBIAL ENHANCED OIL RECOVERIES

MICROBIAL ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY (MEOR)

ORIGINAL OIL IN PLACES

Salinity

SALINITY VARIATIONS

Enhanced recovery

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IIT Madras has been ranked as the top engineering institute in India for four years in a row by the National Institutional Ranking Framework of the MHRD

It currently offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees across 16 disciplines in Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Management. About 596 faculty belonging to science and engineering departments and centres of the Institute are engaged in teaching, research and industrial consultancy.

IIT Madras

Improved empirical relations for estimating original oil in place recovered during microbial enhanced oil recovery under varied salinity conditions

Petroleum Science and Technology

In-situ microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is an economical and environment friendlier technique to recover the trapped oil from oil reservoirs. However, its oil recovery efficiency is reduced significantly due to the occurrence of formation damage induced by bio-clogging. Hence, to improve the oil recovery efficiency, it is required to understand the effects of bio-clogging on in-situ MEOR processes, which could assist in development of suitable well stimulation strategies. Thus, in the present study, the influence of bio-clogging induced formation damage on in-situ MEOR processes has been numerically investigated for different Reynolds number (Re) by varying the microbial slug injection rate (Qn) and for different biosurfactant yield (YPX) values. It is found out that with lowering of Re and increasing the YPX values, the bio-clogging and sweep efficiency increases, while the swept length decreases. The study determines the critical time and critical distance to perform well stimulation technique, in order to completely evade the detrimental effects of bio-clogging on residual oil recovery. The results revealed that in the absence of bio-clogging: (a) the original oil in place (OOIP) recovered could be increased by 106% and 24.5% by flooding at 1Re and 3Re respectively from its respective bio-clogging OOIP levels; and (b) the final OOIP recovered at 1Re is nearly equivalent to that of 3Re. Finally, the study concludes that the oil recovery during in-situ MEOR could be enhanced significantly at relatively lower cost by: (a) regularly performing the well stimulation at the prescribed critical time and for critical distance; and (b) selecting microbes with higher YPX values and flooding them at relatively lower Re. Thus, the present study would assist in: selection of suitable Qn, microbe and nutrients; and efficient planning of well stimulation operations to improve the oil recovery. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd

Fuel

Influence of bio-clogging induced formation damage on performance of microbial enhanced oil recovery processes

Journal	Data powered by TypesetPetroleum Science and Technology
Publisher	Data powered by TypesetTaylor and Francis Inc.
Open Access	No