Investigation and quantifying effect of dispersion on oil recovery in the process of viscoelastic polymer flooding using numerical method

ABSTRACT

In this study an existent mathematical model was implemented to investigate the effect of dispersion on oil recovery of core-flood experiments in process of viscoelastic polymer flooding as a tertiary stage of enhanced oil recovery. Discretized forms of equations of pressure, saturation, and concentrations were obtained and solved by implicit in pressure and explicit in saturation and concentrations with considering effect of time step on solution. Furthermore, a new procedure was presented to solve polymer concentration equation by trial and error. The results showed that dispersion phenomenon reduces displacement efficiency of viscoelastic polymer flooding.

KEYWORDS:

• Dispersion
• enhanced oil recovery
• mathematical model
• numerical method
• viscoelastic polymer

Funding

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge funding from the National Foundation of Elites of Iran and assisting National Iranian South Oil Company (NISOC) for this research.