Effect of nanoparticles and pre-shearing on the performance of water-soluble polymers flow in porous media

Polymer flooding is a commercially viable chemical enhanced oil recovery (cEOR) method. It includes the injection of water-soluble polymers into a reservoir to improve the drive water viscosity and consequently to increase the sweep and displacement efficiency of the water. Despite the success in both laboratory and field applications, there are...

Investigation on foam-assisted chemical flooding for enhanced oil recovery: An experimental and mechanistic simulation study

Foam-assisted chemical flooding (FACF) is a novel enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methodology that combines the injection of a surfactant slug, to mobilize previously trapped residual oil, with foam generation for drive mobility control, thus displacing the mobilized banked oil. The main goal of this study concerns the understanding of oil...

Investigation on Alkali-Surfactant-Foam (ASF) for Enhanced Oil Recovery, Experimentally and Theoretically

This thesis presented an extensive study on various aspects of ASF flooding process for EOR. It provides insight into hybrid EOR processes that are of a combination of immiscible gas and chemicals injection in sandstone reservoir. We wanted to discover the mechanism of oil displacement by ASF flooding in terms of 1) formation of oil bank, 2)...

Carbonated water flooding: Process overview in the frame of co2 flooding

The main scope of the work related to the physical and dynamical processes associated with the injection of carbonated water in porous media. Carbonated water flooding is an alternative for traditional CO2 flooding. Both methods have the potential to recover any oil left behind after primary and secondary recovery while storing CO2 at the same...

Formation dry-out and injectivity impairment during CO2 storage in saline aquifers

This research concerns the geological storage of CO2 and in particular injectivity impairment problems related to salt precipitation. Drying and salt precipitation in geological formations can have serious consequences for upstream operations in terms of injectivity and productivity. This can negatively affect the performance of injection and...

Immiscible foam for enhancing oil recovery

Growing worldwide oil demand increased the need of new and efficient oil recovery methods. Gas injection in oil reservoirs is deemed one of the most widely used methods to increase oil recovery. However, the full potential of gas injection is often not realized due to poor vertical and areal sweep efficiency of the gas. Foaming could be a...

Formation of Methane and Carbon Dioxide Hydrates in Bulk and in Porous Media

Gashydraatvorming is een kristallisatieproces. Dit proces bestaat uit twee fases, respectievelijk nucleatie (de vorming van nucleatie kernen) en hydraatgroei (degroei van kleine nucleatiekernen tot grote hydraatkristallen). Deze twee fases van het kristallisatieproces worden in het binaire systeem gekenmerkt door de nucleatietijd en de...

Two-phase reactive mass transfer of an oil-soluble chemical in porous media: A CT-scan study

Water production is a growing problem within the oil industry, as oil and gas fields mature worldwide and water breakthrough becomes more and more common. Often water production leads to reduction in productivity and reduction of the ultimate hydrocarbon recovery from a field. The challenges we face in regard to water production are outlined in...

Enhanced transport phenomena in CO2 sequestration and CO2 EOR

The results of this thesis give insight into the (mass)-transfer during flow of gases, especially CO2, in various gas-liquid systems. A number of experiments was performed to investigate the transport phenomena through interfaces with and without surfactant monolayers. The observed phenomena have been incorporated into physical models to predict...

Polymer gels for water control: NMR and CT scan studies

As oil and gas reservoirs mature, larger volumes of water are produced. These large volumes of produced water need to be separated, processed, treated and re-injected into the reservoir. All of these processes impose extra costs to the hydrocarbon production. Water rates can increase until production from a certain field is no longer economical....

Two-phase reactive transport of an oil-soluble chemical: An NMR study

An oil-soluble chemical (OSC) is a chemical substance which is soluble and chemically inert in oil, but reacts with water to form a gel. Application of an OSC can be found in oil- and gas production. An increased water production, which usually occurs in mature oil fields, can be remedied by injecting the OSC in the near-wellbore area. The OSC...