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Pore Scale Investigations in Support of Simultaneous Enhanced Oil Recovery and Carbon Sequestration Applications at the Field Scale


EMSL Project ID
44394

Abstract

A project has been recently funded by the US Department of Energy to investigate how detailed displacement experimentation and numerical simulations at the pore and core scale can be used to improve our understanding of concurrent CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at the field scale. In this project, the potential of concurrent CO2-EOR and CCS will be investigated as a case study for a sandstone formation in the Ordos Basin (Inner Mongolia) where the Shenhua Group plans to inject CO2 coming from its coal liquefaction plant in the near future.
In the first year of the project, the main goal is to demonstrate that experiments can be conducted at the pore scale for realistic representations of the site pore geometries, using micromodels under reservoir conditions. A total of four cores, with a variety of apparent permeability, have recently been collected from the reservoir for x-ray tomography analysis at the NETL. Based on this analysis, images of grain and pore structures will be developed which, in turn, will be used to generate the micromodels at PNNL's EMSL. Micromodel displacement studies where oil is removed by supercritical or liquid CO2 will be conducted in EMSL's new microfluidics laboratory. The success of this project is highly dependent on the ability to fabricate micromodels and to conduct controlled displacement experiments under reservoir conditions. Only EMSL offers the unique combination of micromodel fabrication and the experimental facilities to conduct multiphase displacement studies under reservoir conditions.

Project Details

Project type
Limited Scope
Start Date
2011-05-02
End Date
2011-07-02
Status
Closed

Team

Principal Investigator

Mart Oostrom
Institution
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Team Members

Ying Wang
Institution
Southwest Petroleum University

Changyong Zhang
Institution
ExxonMobil Research and Engineering

Related Publications

Zhang C, M Oostrom, JW Grate, TW Wietsma, and MG Warner. 2011. "Liquid CO2 Displacement of Water in a Dual-Permeability Pore Network Micromodel." Environmental Science & Technology 45(17):7581-7588. doi:10.1021/es201858r