Complex flow behaviors of viscoelastic fluids in porous medium for applications in Oil & Gas industry

 

Shauvik De1, Steffen Berg2,3

1Shell India Markets Private Limited, Bangalore, India, shauvik.de@shell.com

2Shell Global Solutions International B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, steffen.berg@shell.com

3Imperial College London

Abstract

 

During the oil and gas recovery from subsurface, the recovery efficiency is mainly limited by two factors: pore-scale trapping resulting in irreducible hydrocarbon saturations and bypassing because of limited sweep efficiency due to rock heterogeneity, viscosity contrast and viscous instabilities. In order to improve the sweep efficiency, hydro-soluble polymer solutions with Non-Newtonian rheology are applied. The difficulty is in predicting the in-situ effective viscosity in Darcy-scale flow in the porous medium, based on bulk rheology provided for instance by shear rheometers [1]. Most of the relevant polymer systems, however, also exhibit viscoelasticity which can lead to elastic turbulence during flow through porous medium [2]. Here we show progress on the fundamental side, how to visualize the respective pore scale flow fields and understand the fundamental origins using a system that contains one single pore throat

[3] and multiple pore throats and its effect on residual oil saturation [4]. In addition, we demonstrate how we numerically simulate the flow of viscoelastic fluids in porous medium and characterize elastic turbulence [5].

 

[1] Berg & van Wunnik, Transport in Porous Media 117(2), 229-246, 2017.

[2] S De, J Van Der Schaaf, NG Deen, JAM Kuipers, E Peters, JT Padding, Physics of Fluids 29 (11), 113102

[3] Eguagie et al. Phys. Rev. E 101(4), 042605, 2020.

[4] S De, P Krishnan, J Van Der Schaaf, JAM Kuipers, E Peters, JT Padding, Journal of colloid and interface science 510, 262-271

[5] S De, JAM Kuipers, E Peters, JT Padding, Physical Review Fluids 2 (5), 053303

 

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