Compositional Modeling to Analyze the Effect of CH4 on Coupled Carbon Storage and Enhanced Oil Recovery Process

Miscibility Characteristics of CO2-Oil in Tight Sandstone Reservoirs: Insights from Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Identifying the microscopic mechanism of CO2-oil miscibility is significant for the CO2 enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) in tight sandstone reservoirs. In this work, the effects of oil composition, formation pressure, temperature, and methane content on the characteristics of the CO2-oil miscibility were systematically studied by molecular simulation methods. According to the change of oil-gas centroid displacement, the CO2-oil miscibility behavior was divided into four stages: rapid diffusion, CO2 dissolution and oil swelling, competitive adsorption and oil film detachment, and complete miscibility or dynamic equilibrium stability. The results showed that light or medium component oil is more easily miscible with CO2 under reservoir conditions. The changes in temperature and pressure will greatly influence the oil-gas miscibility. Increasing the temperature is conducive to reducing the adsorption energy between oil and quartz, thus improving the miscibility of CO2 and heavy component oil. However, the static swelling effects of CO2 alone cannot effectively displace the heavy component oil on quartz. The CO2 diffusion coefficient perpendicular to the quartz surface does not increase continuously with the temperature increase due to the adsorption of oil and quartz. There is a critical temperature range of 320-340 K, which makes the miscibility effects the best. A small amount of CH4 can enhance the interaction energy between the two phases of oil and gas, thus promoting the miscibility of CO2 and oil at the interface. However, it is not conducive to oil film detachment, with the CH4 content increasing.

Compositional Modeling of Dimethyl Ether–CO2 Mixed Solvent for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Dimethyl ether (DME) is a compound first introduced by Shell as a chemical solvent for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). This study aims to investigate the efficiency of EOR using the minimum miscible pressure (MMP) and viscous gravity number when a mixed solvent of CO2 and DME is injected. Adding DME to the CO2 water-alternating-gas process reduces the MMP and viscous gravity number. Reduction in MMP results in miscible conditions at lower pressures, which has a favorable effect on oil swelling and viscosity reduction, leading to improved mobility of the oil. In addition, the viscous gravity number decreases, increasing the sweep efficiency by 26.6%. Numerical studies were conducted through a series of multi-phase, multi-component simulations. At a DME content of 25%, the MMP decreased by 30.1% and the viscous gravity number decreased by 66.4% compared with the injection of CO2 only. As a result, the maximum oil recovery rate increased by 31% with simultaneous injection of DME and CO2 compared with only using CO2.