Summary
Accurate modeling of an ASP flood requires detailed representation of
geochemistry and, if natural acids are present, the saponification process.
Geochemistry and saponification affect the propagation of the injected
chemicals and the amount of generated natural soaps. These in turn determine
the chemical phase behavior and, hence, the effectiveness of the ASP
process.
In this paper, it is shown that by coupling a multipurpose reservoir
simulator (MPRS) with PHREEQC (Parkhurst and Appelo 1999; Charlton and
Parkhurst 2008), a robust and flexible tool is developed to model ASP floods.
PHREEQC is used as the chemical-reaction engine, which determines the
equilibrium state of the chemical processes modeled. The MPRS models the impact
of the chemicals on the flow properties, solves the flow equations, and
transports the chemicals.
The validity of the approach is confirmed by benchmarking the results with
the ASP module of the UTCHEM simulator (Delshad et al. 2000). Moreover, ASP
corefloods have been matched with the new tool. The functionality of the model
also has been tested on a 2D sector model. The advantages of using PHREEQC as
the chemical engine include its rich database of chemical species and its
flexibility in changing the chemical processes to be modeled. Therefore, the
coupling procedure presented in this paper can also be extended to other
chemical enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) methods.
© 2012. Society of Petroleum Engineers
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History
- Original manuscript received:
15 September 2011
- Meeting paper published:
20 July 2011
- Revised manuscript received:
17 January 2012
- Manuscript approved:
13 March 2012
- Published online:
18 June 2012
- Version of record:
7 August 2012
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