Engineering Commons^™

Mechanistic Modeling Of Nanoparticle-Stabilized Supercritical Co2 Foams And Its Implication In Field-Scale Eor Applications, Doris Patricia Ortiz Maestre

LSU Master's Theses

Previous experimental studies show that nanoparticle-stabilized supercritical CO₂ foams (or, NP CO₂ foams) can be applied as an alternative to surfactant foams, in order to reduce CO₂ mobility in gas injection enhanced oil recovery (EOR). These nanoparticles, if chosen correctly, can be an effective foam stabilizer attached at the fluid interface in a wide range of physicochemical conditions.

By using NP CO₂ foam experiments available in the literature, this study performs two tasks: (i) presenting how a mechanistic foam model can be used to fit experimental data and determine required model parameters, and (ii) investigating the …

Modeling Effects Of Coupled Convection And Co2 Injection In Stimulating Geopressured Geothermal Reservoirs, Tatyana Plaksina

LSU Master's Theses

Geopressured geothermal brines are a vast geothermal resource in the US Gulf of Mexico region. In particular, geopressured sandstones near salt domes are potential sources of geothermal energy because salt diapirs with high thermal conductivities may pierce younger, cooler strata. These characteristics enhance transfer heat from older, hotter strata at the base of the diapir into shallower strata. Moreover, widespread geopressure in the Gulf region tends to preserve permeability, enhancing productivity. As an example, the Camerina A sand of South Louisiana was chosen as a geomodel for a numerical simulation study of effects of CO2 injection and coupled convection as …

Evaluation Of Sweep Efficiency Of A Mature Co2 Flood In Little Creek Field, Mississippi, Didem Senocak

LSU Master's Theses

CO2 displacement is the most widely used EOR process, but poor sweep efficiency and large CO2 utilization rates are limitations to the economic and technical success of CO2 floods. Developing a methodology to maximize the sweep efficiency and minimize the CO2 utilization rate would greatly improve the economics of these fields. This thesis evaluates the sweep efficiency of a successful, late-in-life, continuous injection CO2 flood at the Little Creek Field, Mississippi. In this work, we evaluate several heterogeneity measures in terms of recovery efficiency and utilization rate. Core studies available from 41% of the wells in the field were used …

Demonstration And Performance Characterization Of The Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage (Gagd) Process Using A Visual Method, Thaer N.N. Mahmoud

LSU Master's Theses

The Gas Assisted Gravity Drainage (GAGD) process, currently being developed at LSU, is designed to take advantage of gravity to allow vertical segregation between the injected gas and reservoir crud oil due to their density differences. GAGD is recommended for use with CO2 gas. CO2 dissolves in oil and causes both swelling and viscosity reduction of oil. The GAGD process uses the existing vertical wells for CO2 gas injection, and a horizontal well near the bottom of the payzone for oil production. GAGD, as an EOR process, is not restricted to tertiary oil recovery only. In this research study, a …

Immiscible And Miscible Gas-Oil Displacements In Porous Media, Madhav Mukund Kulkarni

LSU Master's Theses

Gas Injection is the second largest EOR process in U.S. To increase the extent of the reservoir contacted by displacing fluids, gas and water are injected intermittently - water-alternating-gas (WAG) process, is widely practiced. This experimental study is aimed at evaluating the WAG process performance in short and long cores as a function of gas-oil miscibility and brine composition. This performance evaluation has been carried out by comparing oil recoveries between WAG injection and continuous gas injection (CGI). Miscible (2500 psi) and immiscible (500 psi) floods were conducted using Berea cores, n-Decane and two different brines, namely the commonly used …