TITLE:
Performance Evaluation of Ionic Liquids Using Numerical Simulation
AUTHORS:
Mostafa Elaghoury, Ali Alarbah, Ezeddin Shirif, Na Jia
KEYWORDS:
CMG-STARS, CMG-CMOST, Chemical Flooding, Ionic Liquid, Recovery Factor, History Matching
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science,
Vol.12 No.3,
June
29,
2022
ABSTRACT: Given the rise in oil productivity from conventional and unconventional
resources in Canada using Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), the need to understand
and characterize these techniques, for the purpose of recovery optimization,
has taken a prominent role in resource management. Chemical flooding has proved
to be one of the most efficient EOR techniques. This study investigated the
potential of employing Ionic Liquids (ILs) as alternative chemical agents for
improving oil recovery. There is very little attention paid to employing this
technique as well as few experimental and simulation studies. Consequently,
very limited data are available. Since
pilot and field studies are relatively expensive and time consuming, a
numerical simulation study using CMG-STARS simulator was utilized to explore
the efficiency of employing 1-Ethyl-3-Methyl-Imidazolium Acetate ([EMIM][Ac])
and 1-Benzyl-3-meth- limidazolium chloride ([BenzMIM][Cl]) with respect to improving medium
oil recovery. Eight different lab-scale sandpack flooding experiments were selected to develop a numerical model to obtain the
history matching of the experimental flooding results using CMG-CMOST. We
observed that the main challenge was tuning the relative permeability
curves to achieve a successful match for the oil recovery factor. Finally, a
sensitivity study was performed to examine the effect of the chemical injection
rate, the chemical concentration, the slug size, and the initiation time on oil
recovery. The results showed a noticeable increase in the oil RF when injecting
IL compared to conventional waterflooding.