DOI: 10.5176/2251-3361_GEOS12.38
Authors: Ji Ho Lee, Kun Sang Lee
Abstract: Accurate assessment of polymer flooding requires the understanding of wettability of the reservoirs. Because wettability controls a mechanism of fluids flow in the reservoirs, the performance of polymer flooding depends on wettability of reservoirs. Different wettability leads to different relative permeability and capillary pressure. Mixing with polymer increases the viscosity of driving fluid, i.e. polymer solution, which controls mobility ratio to improve the sweep efficiency. A numerical reservoir simulator including a three dimensional fluid flow and mass transport is used to investigate effect of wettability on the recovery process operating under polymer flooding followed by water flooding. All the cases of polymer flooding are compared with the cases of water flooding to evaluate how much polymer flooding improves the oil recovery and water oil ratio. In application of polymer flooding, significant improvement in oil recovery is obtained for the case of oil-wet reservoir. For the case of water-wet reservoir, polymer flooding results in increased water oil ratio compared with water flooding unfortunately. However, polymer flooding for oil-wet reservoir shows the significant reduction of water oil ratio.
Keywords: wettability; polymer flooding; oil-wet reservoir; water-wet reservoir; reservoir simulation
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