Lirong Zhong's Proposal --
TEM/SEM-Microprobe Study on Carbon Dioxide Flooding Sandstone Core
EMSL Project ID
24820
Abstract
The Alaska North Slope (ANS) contains enormous potential energy resources in the form of unconventional shallow viscous oil (VO). As production of conventional oil decline, unconventional resources take on a more important role in supplying national energy needs. Large onshore VO deposits exist beneath the current ANS infrastructure. In-place ANS shallow VO and heavy oil resources exceed 25 billion barrels. The full extent of these resources and their producibility are less understood. As the infrastructure matures and conventional resource production declines, assessment of VO and heavy oil becomes a priority, and the investigation of production methods for these shallow unconventional resources is required to promote economically viable resource extraction. An U.S. DOE funded 3-year project entitled, "Phase Behavior, Solid Organic Precipitation and Mobility Characterization Studies in Support of Enhanced Viscous Oil Recovery on Alaska North Slope" leading by PNNL and University of Alaska Fairbanks is being carried out.In this project, one task is to study the feasibility of carbon dioxide (CO2) flood enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technology as the method to enhance the viscous oil recovery. Injection and pressurization of CO2 dissolves this compound into the crude oil, greatly reducing oil viscosity and increasing oil bulk and relative permeability. One of the most worrisome problems associated with the injection of carbon dioxide into VO reservoir, however, is the tendency for solid organic deposition (waxes and/or asphaltenes) and thus reduction in the permeability/injectivity of the oil reservoir causing significant reduction in oil recovery and hence operating profits. Therefore, we will investigate the tendency of ANS VO to deposit asphaltenes and/or waxes and aim to determine the conditions that will minimize the organic solid phase precipitation and injectivity decline, while maintaining the oil mobilization efficiency.
In the CO2 flood experiments, the ANS crude oil will be introduced into sandstone cores, and supercritical CO2 will then be flushed through the oil-containing rock core. In order to reveal the organic solid precipitation problem, the sandstone core used in the flooding has to be characterized. We propose this characterization to be carried out at EMSL, using the state-of-the-art TEM/SEM - Microprobe systems. About 10 samples will be studied and 60 hours are estimated for this project.
Project Details
Project type
Large-Scale EMSL Research
Start Date
2007-06-09
End Date
2008-06-15
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members