Pore-scale modeling of viscoelastic flow and the effect of polymer elasticity on residual oil saturation

textPolymers used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) help to control the mobility ratio between oil and aqueous phases and as a result, polymer flooding improves sweep efficiency in reservoirs. However, the conventional wisdom is that polymer flooding does not have considerable effect on pore-level displacement because pressure forces would not be enough to overcome trapping caused by capillary forces. Recently, both coreflood experiments and field data suggest that injecting viscoelastic polymers, such as hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM), can result in lower residual oil saturation. The hypothesis is that the polymer elasticity provides several pore-level mechanisms for oil mobilization that are generally not significant for purely-viscous fluids. Both experiments and modeling need to be performed to investigate the effect of polymer elasticity on residual oil saturation. Pore-scale modeling and micro-fluidic experiments can be used to investigate pore-level physics, and then used to upscale to the macro-scale. The objective of this work is to understand the effect of polymer elasticity on apparent viscosity and residual oil saturation in porous media. Single- and multi-phase pore-level computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling for viscoelastic polymer flow is performed to investigate the dominant mechanisms at the pore level to mobilize trapped oil. Several interesting results are found from the CFD results. First, the elasticity of the polymer results in an increase in normal stress at the pore-level; therefore, the normal stresses exerted on a static oil droplet are significant and not negligible as for a purely-viscous fluid. The CFD results show that viscoelastic fluid exerts additional forces on the oil-phase which may help mobilize trapped oil out of the porous medium. Second, due to the elasticity of polymer, the viscoelastic polymer has some level of pulling effect; while passing above a dead-end pore it can pull out the trapped oil phase and then mobilize it. However, both CFD modeling and micro-fluidic experiments show the pulling-effect is not likely the main mechanism to reduce oil saturation at pore-level. Third, dynamic CFD simulations show less deformation of the oil phase while viscoelastic polymer is displacing fluid compared to purely viscous fluid. It may justify the hypothesis that polymer elasticity resists against snap-off mechanism. As a result, when viscoelastic polymer displaces the oil ganglia, the oil phase does not snap off, and the oil phase remains connected, and therefore easier to move in porous media compared to disconnected oil. For single phase flow, a closed-form flow equation has been developed based on CFD modeling in converging/diverging ducts representative of pore throats. The pore-level equations were substituted into a pore-network model and validated against experimental data. Good agreement is observed. This study reveals important findings about the effect of polymer elasticity to reduce the residual oil saturation; however, more experiments and simulations are recommended to fully-understand the mobilization mechanisms and take advantage of them to optimize the polymer-flooding process in the field.Petroleum and Geosystems Engineerin