A new mechanism of viscoelastic fluid for enhanced oil recovery: Viscoelastic oscillation

Authors

  • Chiyu Xie* School of Civil and Resource Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, P. R. China;Center for Subsurface Energy and the Environment, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA (Email:chiyuxie@ustb.edu.cn)
  • Ke Xu College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China
  • Pengpeng Qi Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
  • Jianping Xu Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
  • Matthew T. Balhoff Center for Subsurface Energy and the Environment, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA;Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA

Keywords:

Viscoelastic fluid, droplet oscillation, elastic instability, enhanced oil recovery

Abstract

This report summarizes our recent experimental findings [Xie et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 2022] and pore-scale simulation results [Xie et al., Phys. Rev. Fluids., 2020] on viscoelastic oscillation, which is a new observation of viscoelastic instability in the multiphase flow state. The viscoelastic oscillation causes trapping of droplets in contraction-expansion micro-channels regardless of the injection rate. Based on the force balance analysis on the viscous, capillary and elastic forces, the oscillation amplitude is found to linearly increase with viscoelasticity, and the trapped droplet size is determined by the elasto-capillary number. The oscillation also helps to extract droplets from their originally trapped positions such as dead-ends once a critical Deborah number is reached. These results successfully explain the phenomenon that the alternative injection of viscoelastic and inelastic fluids continually produces additional oil, indicating that the viscoelastic oscillation is a new important mechanism of viscoelastic fluid for enhanced oil recovery.

Cited as: Xie, C., Xu, K., Qi, P., Xu, J., Balhoff, M. T. A new mechanism of viscoelastic fluid for enhanced oil recovery: Viscoelastic oscillation. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2022, 6(3): 267-268. https://doi.org/10.46690/ager.2022.03.10

References

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Xie, C., Balhoff, M. T. Lattice Boltzmann modeling of the apparent viscosity of thinning–elastic fluids in porous media. Transport in Porous Media, 2021, 137: 63-86.

Xie, C., Lei, W., Wang, M. Lattice Boltzmann model for three-phase viscoelastic fluid flow. Physical Review E, 2018, 97(2): 023312.

Xie, C., Qi, P., Xu, K., et al. Oscillative trapping of a droplet in a converging channel induced by elastic instability. Physical Review Letters, 2022, 128(5): 054502.

Xie, C., Xu, K., Mohanty, K., et al. Nonwetting droplet oscillation and displacement by viscoelastic fluids. Physical Review Fluids, 2020, 5(6): 063301.

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Published

2022-05-25

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 3 (2022): June

Section

Articles