Engineering Commons^™

Preformed-Particle-Gel Placement And Plugging Performance In Fractures With Tips, Ze Wang, Baojun Bai

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Preformed-particle gels (PPGs) have been applied for reducing excessive water production caused by fractures in reservoirs. A portion of the fractures existing in reservoirs is composed of a void part and a fracture tip. The PPG placement behavior and plugging performance could be mainly affected by the fracture tips. A fracture with a tip, called a "partially open fracture" in this paper, was designed to investigate the placement and water-plugging performance of PPG. Cylindrical sandstone cores were used to manufacture partially open fractures. Pressure data of PPG injection, post-gel water breakthrough, and stable injection were analyzed to investigate the PPG …

Experimental Study On The Influence Of Slickwater On Shale Permeability, Zhonghua Liu, Baojun Bai, Zheyu Zhang, Jing Tang, Shunpeng Zeng, Xiaogang Li

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

There are two diametrically opposite views of the influence of slickwater on shale permeability among scholars at home and abroad. We used the shale outcrops rock samples from the Lower Silurian Longmaxi Formation in Sichuan Basin. The permeability of these dry samples before and after immersion in different solution systems were tested by pulse attenuation method. The experimental results show that the impregnation of different slickwater components and standard salt solution can promote the increase of the permeability of shale samples. The stress sensitivity of shale samples after liquid immersion is medium weak to weak. The sample stress sensitivity is …

Establishment And Application Of Fractal Capillary Tube Bundle Model Of Porous Media, Zhonghua Liu, Jianing Shen, Qianhua Xiao, Zhongpei Ding, Shunpeng Zeng, Baojun Bai

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In view of the problem of statistical regression constant in the model of capillary tube bundles in the porous media, a capillary bundle percolation model with fractal geometry was reconstructed. The function expressions of the fractal coefficient and Kozeny constant were deduced. The relationship between the macroscopic fractal properties of porous media and the fractal dimension and the micro pore parameters were obtained. Results show: Fractal coefficient is a function of fractal dimension, maximum pore radius and minimum pore radius; The macroscopic physical properties of porous media are a function of the fractal dimension and the radius of the capillary …

Explosive Dust Test Vessel Comparison Using Pulverized Pittsburgh Coal, Jacob Miller, Jay Schafler, Phillip R. Mulligan, Robert Eades, Kyle A. Perry, Catherine E. Johnson

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Explosions of coal dust are a major safety concern within the coal mining industry. The explosion and subsequent fires caused by coal dust can result in significant property damage, loss of life in underground coal mines and damage to coal processing facilities. The United States Bureau of Mines conducted research on coal dust explosions until 1996 when it was dissolved. In the following years, the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) developed a test standard, ASTM E1226, to provide a standard test method characterizing the “explosibility” of particulate solids of combustible materials suspended in air. The research presented herein …

Numerical Simulation Study On Miscible Eor Techniques For Improving Oil Recovery In Shale Oil Reservoirs, Dheiaa Alfarge, Mingzhen Wei, Baojun Bai

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Shale formations in North America such as Bakken, Niobrara, and Eagle Ford have huge oil in place, 100—900 billion barrels of oil in Bakken only. However, the predicted primary recovery is still below 10%. Therefore, seeking for techniques to enhance oil recovery in these complex plays is inevitable. Although most of the previous studies in this area recommended that CO₂ would be the best EOR technique to improve oil recovery in these formations, pilot tests showed that natural gases performance clearly exceeds CO₂ performance in the field scale. In this paper, two different approaches have been integrated to …

Additive Manufacturing Of Liners For Shaped Charges, Jason Ho, Cody Lough, Phillip R. Mulligan, Edward C. Kinzel, Catherine E. Johnson

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A Shaped Charge (SC) is an explosive device used to focus a detonation in a desired direction, and has applications in oil extraction, weaponry and demolition. The focusing relies on a void in the explosive mass, shaped by a metal liner that becomes a super-heated projectile during detonation. Additive Manufacturing (AM) allows greater design freedom and geometric complexity for the liner portion of the SC. Specifically, hierarchical structuring and functional grading can potentially provide greater velocity, directionality, and efficiency. In this work, Selective Laser Melting (SLM) is used to explore different geometries for an SC liner made out of SS …

Insights Into Low Salinity Water Flooding, Hasan N. Al-Saedi, Ralph E. Flori, Patrick V. Brady

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In our previous work, we examined the potential of divalent cations (Mg²⁺ and Ca²⁺) in formation water (FW) for low-salinity (LS) EOR effect, where the increase in divalent cations in FW lowered the impact of LS water EOR.

In this paper, we demonstrate the importance of the same divalent cations in the injected water (both FW and LS water). We also try to relate the percentage of the divalent cations in the injected water to that in the FW to engineer the optimum concentration of the injected water and obtain the maximum oil recovery from sandstone reservoirs. …

Comparison Between Cold/Hot Smart Water Flooding In Sandstone Reservoirs, Hasan N. Al-Saedi, Ariel Williams, Ralph E. Flori

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The incremental oil recovery has been investigated and approved by many laboratory and field projects using water flooding in tertiary stage. The salinity of the injected water is an important factor observed by many researchers. The more salinity decreases the more oil recovery obtained. The investigations on the hot low salinity water flooding have been conducted by many researchers and they found out that it is useful for increasing oil recovery especially heavy oil due to reducing oil viscosity and make it easy to produce to the surface. The thermal expansion of water plays an important role in the incremental …

Spectral Analysis Of Surface Waves To Detect Subsurface Voids, Payman Hajiani, Neil Lennart Anderson, J. David Rogers

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Systems and methods for detecting a subsurface cavity. A source applies a force to ground under inspection and a plurality of sensors coupled to the ground detect resulting surface waves. A processor is configured to extract phase and frequency components of the acquired seismic data, identify a phase shift in surface waves in the ground under inspection based on the extracted phase and frequency components, and determine one or more physical characteristics of a subsurface cavity based on the identified phase shift

Limit Analysis On Seismic Stability Of Anisotropic And Nonhomogeneous Slopes With Anti-Slide Piles, Wei Bing Gong, Jing Pei Li, Lin Li

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study employs the limit analysis method to evaluate the seismic stability of anisotropic and nonhomogeneous slopes stabilized with anti-slide piles. The pseudo-static approach is used to simplify the earthquake load. The yield seismic acceleration factor is obtained from the optimization procedure and the results are verified with the published data. Then, the seismically unstable slope is reinforced with anti-slide piles, and the seismic stability of the reinforced slope is explored. The results show that the anisotropy and Non homogeneity of soils have significant effects on the stabilizing force required from the anti-slide piles and the optimal location of the …

Study Of Gas Production From Shale Reservoirs With Multi-Stage Hydraulic Fracturing Horizontal Well Considering Multiple Transport Mechanisms, Chaohua Guo, Mingzhen Wei, Hong Liu

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Development of unconventional shale gas reservoirs (SGRs) has been boosted by the advancements in two key technologies: horizontal drilling and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing. A large number of multi-stage fractured horizontal wells (MsFHW) have been drilled to enhance reservoir production performance. Gas flow in SGRs is a multi-mechanism process, including: desorption, diffusion, and non-Darcy flow. The productivity of the SGRs with MsFHW is influenced by both reservoir conditions and hydraulic fracture properties. However, rare simulation work has been conducted for multi-stage hydraulic fractured SGRs. Most of them use well testing methods, which have too many unrealistic simplifications and assumptions. Also, no …