3-D Modelling and Simulation of a Reservoir for Surfactant-Polymer Flooding Using Eclipse Software

Surfactant-polymer flooding is a tertiary enhanced oil recovery method used to recover oil that remained in the reservoir after the primary and secondary oil recovery mechanisms. Predicting the pressure in the reservoir is important for oil production as pressure changes with time. A suitable approach to achieve this task is to derive fluid flow equation based on the reservoir characteristics and solve them numerically which provide the solution to the mathematical fluid flow model (diffusivity equation). In this study, 3-D reservoir was modelled using Eclipse software. The fluid flow equations in a porous media were derived based on the simulated model and the reservoir conditions. Numerical solution using implicit formulation to solve the mathematical fluid flow model (diffusivity equation) was investigated by developing Python codes using Jupyter library to ascertain the pressure distribution for the reservoir and imported into Eclipse simulator. Simulation was carried out using surfactant-polymer and reservoir properties to determine the oil recovery. The results of the study showed that pressure increases with time as oil production continued, and water saturation decreased for the grid-cells of the reservoir. Waterflooding had oil recovery of 38.0% and water-cut of 59.0%, while surfactant flooding had oil recoveries of 42.0%, 46.5%, 49.0% and water-cut of 57.0%, 51.0%, 46.3%. In addition, polymer flooding had oil recoveries of 44.3%, 48.4%, 54.0% and water-cut of 50.0%, 45.0% and 33.0% respectively at different concentrations of 0.3%wt. 0.4%wt. and 0.5%wt.