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Impact of Rock Heterogeneity on Interactions of Microbial-Enhanced Oil Recovery Processes

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Abstract

Residual oil saturation reduction and microbial plugging are two crucial factors in microbial-enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) processes. In our previous study, the residual saturation was defined as a nonlinear function of the trapping number, and an explicit relation between the residual oil saturation and the trapping number was incorporated into a fully coupled biological (B) and hydrological (H) finite element model. In this study, the BH model is extended to consider the impact of rock heterogeneity on microbial-enhanced oil recovery phenomena. Numerical simulations of core flooding experiments are performed to demonstrate the influences of different parameters controlling the onset of oil mobilization. X-ray CT core scans are used to construct numerical porosity-permeability distributions for input to the simulations. Results show clear fine-scale fingering processing, and that trapping phenomena have significant effects on residual oil saturation and oil recovery in heterogeneous porous media. Water contents and bacterial distributions for heterogeneous porous media are compared with those for homogenous porous media. The evolution of the trapping number distribution is directly simulated and visualized. It is shown that the oil recovery efficiency of EOR/MEOR will be lower in heterogeneous media than in homogeneous media, largely due to the difficulty in supplying surfactant to unswept low-permeability zones. However, MEOR also provides efficient plugging along high-permeability zones which acts to increase sweep efficiency in heterogeneous media. Thus, MEOR may potentially be more suited for highly heterogeneous media than conventional EOR.

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Abbreviations

A :

Cross-sectional area

a, a ps :

Parameters

C b, C n, C p :

Concentrations of microbes, nutrients, and products

C b,i, C n,i :

Injected concentrations of microbes and nutrients

\({C_{{\rm ps}},\,\overline{{C}}_{{\rm ps}},\,C_{{\rm ps},\min},\,C_{{\rm ps},\max}}\) :

Surfactant concentration, average, minimum, and maximum

\({C_{\rm s}^\ast}\) :

Critical concentration of nutrients

\({\vec{D}_{\rm b},\,\vec{D}_{\rm n},\,\vec{D}_{\rm p}}\) :

Diffusion-dispersion tensors of microbes, nutrients, and products

\({D_{\rm b}^{{\rm eff}},\,D_{{\rm n}}^{{\rm eff}},\,D_{{\rm p}}^{{\rm eff}}}\) :

Effective diffusion coefficients

d 1 :

Bacterial decay rate

E :

Expected value operator

f w :

Fractional flow coefficient

g :

Gravitational acceleration

g 1 :

Bacterial growth rate

h :

Distance

h c :

Capillary pressure head

K 0 :

Initial permeability in homogeneous porous media

K :

Instantaneous permeability

K r,l :

Relative permeability of phase l

K p/s :

Saturation constant for product on substrate

k 1, k 2, k 3 :

Reversible attachment, detachment, and irreversible attachment rates

m :

Parameter

m s :

Maintenance energy

N B :

Bond number

N Ca :

Capillary number

N T :

Trapping number

n :

Parameter

\({\vec{n}}\) :

Normal vector

p l :

Pressure of phase l

Q l :

Flow rate of phase l

q l :

Source/sink term of phase l

R b, R n, R p :

Reaction rate source-sink terms

R KK :

Permeability spatial autocorrelation function

S l :

Saturation of phase l

S or, \(S_{{\rm or}}^{\min}\), \(S_{{\rm or}}^{\max}\) :

Residual oil saturation, minimum, and maximum

S wi :

Irreducible water saturation

\({S_{\rm w}^\ast}\) :

Normalized water phase saturation

s :

Exponent parameter

T 1, T 2 :

Fitting parameters

t :

Time

t 0 :

Bacterial and nutrient injection time

Δt :

Time step

u w :

Darcy flux of water phase

V g = (0, 0, v g)T :

Settling velocity of bacteria

Y p/b :

Bio-product yield coefficient per unit bacteria

Y p/s :

Bio-product yield coefficient per unit nutrient + substrate

Y s :

Maintenance energy coefficient

α 0 :

Angle of flow relative to horizontal

α b,L, α b,T, α n,L, α n,T, α p,L, α p,T :

Longitudinal and transverse dispersivities

a ps :

Ratio of bio-surfactant to metabolic products

α CT, β CT, γ CT :

Parameters

θ :

Contact angle between aqueous/non-aqueous interface and porous medium

\({\phi_0}\) :

Initial porosity

\({\phi}\) :

Instantaneous porosity

\({\phi_E}\) :

Porosity measured by the experiment

\({\psi_{{\rm CT}}}\) :

Transforming function

λ l :

Transmissibility of phase l

μ l :

Phase viscosity of phase l

\({\psi_{{\rm CT}}}\) :

Maximum product formation rate

ρ l :

Phase density of phase l

ρ b :

Density of bacteria

Δ ρ :

Density difference between aqueous and non-aqueous phases

σ, σ 1, σ 2 :

Volumetric fractions of bacteria attached totally reversibly, and irreversibly

σ Int, σ Int,min, σ Int,max :

Interfacial tension, minimum, and maximum

\({\sigma_K^2}\) :

Variance

\({\underline{\xi}}\) :

Lag vector

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, 6009, Australia

    Jian Li, Jishan Liu & Bashirul Haq

  2. CSIRO Land and Water, Private Bag No. 5, Wembley, WA, 6913, Australia

    Michael G. Trefry, Jungho Park & Colin D. Johnston

  3. School of Earth and Environment, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, 6009, Australia

    Michael G. Trefry & Colin D. Johnston

  4. Western Australian Geothermal Centre of Excellence, Kensington, WA, 6151, Australia

    Michael G. Trefry

  5. CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering, Kensington, WA, 6151, Australia

    Keyu Liu & Michael B. Clennell

  6. CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering, P.O. Box 136, North Ryde, NSW, 1670, Australia

    Herbert Volk

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  1. Jian Li
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  2. Jishan Liu
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Correspondence to Jishan Liu.

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Li, J., Liu, J., Trefry, M.G. et al. Impact of Rock Heterogeneity on Interactions of Microbial-Enhanced Oil Recovery Processes. Transp Porous Med 92, 373–396 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11242-011-9908-5

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