Droplet Microfluidics for Additive Screening in Enhanced Oil Recovery

Enhanced oil recovery is a set of methods used to increase the productivity of a reservoir after it is not possible to economically produce oil using hydrostatic reservoir pressure, artificial lift devices, waterfloods or gas floods. Droplet microfluidics, the study and utilization of ordered multiphase flows in closed microchannels, is predominantly used for biological or chemical reaction screening and particle fabrication. This thesis focuses on using droplet microfluidics to inform enhanced oil recovery. A platform was developed to assess the effect of a set of additives on droplet deformation. Droplets were found to become more deformable with an increase in pH and less deformable with an increase in ionic strength and salinity. These trends agree with behaviour reported in the literature.M.A.S.2018-01-07 00:00:0