Imperial College London
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DrBrankoBijeljic

Faculty of Engineering, Department of Earth Science & Engineering

Principal Research Fellow
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 6420b.bijeljic

 
 
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Location

 

2.53Royal School of MinesSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Alhosani:2019:10.1016/j.advwatres.2019.103432,
author = {Alhosani, A and Scanziani, A and Lin, Q and Pan, Z and Bijeljic, B and Blunt, MJ},
doi = {10.1016/j.advwatres.2019.103432},
journal = {Advances in Water Resources},
title = {In situ pore-scale analysis of oil recovery during three-phase near-miscible CO2 injection in a water-wet carbonate rock},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2019.103432},
volume = {134},
year = {2019}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - We study in situ three-phase near-miscible CO2 injection in a water-wet carbonate rock at elevated temperature and pressure using X-ray microtomography. We examine the recovery mechanisms, presence or absence of oil layers, pore occupancy and interfacial areas during a secondary gas injection process. In contrast to an equivalent immiscible system, we did not observe layers of oil sandwiched between gas in the centre of the pore space and water in the corners. At near-miscible conditions, the measured contact angle between oil and gas was approximately 73°, indicating only weak oil wettability in the presence of gas. Oil flows in the centres of large pores, rather than in layers for immiscible injection, when displaced by gas. This allows for a rapid production of oil since it is no longer confined to movement in thin layers. A significant recovery factor of 80% was obtained and the residual oil saturation existed as disconnected blobs in the corners of the pore space. At equilibrium, gas occupied the biggest pores, while oil and water occupied pores of varying sizes (small, medium and large). Again, this was different from an immiscible system, where water occupied only the smallest pores. We suggest that a double displacement mechanism, where gas displaces water that displaces oil is responsible for shuffling water into larger pores than that seen after initial oil injection. This is only possible since, in the absence of oil layers, gas can contact water directly. The gas-oil and oil-water interfacial areas are lower than in the immiscible case, since there are no oil layers and even water layers in the macro-pore space become disconnected; in contrast, there is a larger direct contact of oil to the solid. These results could serve as benchmarks for developing near-miscible pore-scale modelling tools.
AU  - Alhosani,A
AU  - Scanziani,A
AU  - Lin,Q
AU  - Pan,Z
AU  - Bijeljic,B
AU  - Blunt,MJ
DO  - 10.1016/j.advwatres.2019.103432
PY  - 2019///
SN  - 0309-1708
TI  - In situ pore-scale analysis of oil recovery during three-phase near-miscible CO2 injection in a water-wet carbonate rock
T2  - Advances in Water Resources
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.advwatres.2019.103432
UR  - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0309170819307250
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/74297
VL  - 134
ER  -
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