Development of new methods designed to study flow in porous media and evaluation of nanoparticles and microgels used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

B .LERNER; P. GRANELL; F. GOLMAR; M. VEGA; S.MATURANO; F. STEFANI; C. LASORSA; M. S. PEREZ

Salamanca

Workshop; Nanociencia y Nanotecnología Analitica; 2015

In the production of oil, the wells start producing by a phenomenon called "Primary Production". When this process stops because the bottom hole pressure is not enough, even with the use of bombs, approximately 70% of the oil remains in the ground. To recover this oil, it must used a system called "secondary recovery", which involves using one of the wells (or drill one) as injection well and inject water in it. Thus bottom hole pressure is recovered and the well will produce again. It is considered that the wells are profitable until produce about 95-98% water and the remainder oil. EOR techniques allow to obtain a higher percentage of oil. There are other more expensive EOR methods that consist of adding to the deposit substances that are not normally in it: hot water, bacteria, in situ combustion, different gases, surfactants, polymers, alkalos, etc [1-2] .Until now the previous evaluation for EOR agents have been in the hands of companies that sell the product and the methodology is unknown. The objective of this work is generate a methodology using microfuidic chips, for pre-injection tests and thus able to estimate before the results in field if they will be favorable or not. It should be noted that a pilot trial experience in a few wells, costing several million dollars. That is why having this type of tool could save oil companies a big amount of money. While microfuidic devices are widely used in the biology and biochemistry area [4-7], there are very few records of their use in EOR applications [8-10], so it is believed that this work will help to explore a new field in the area of microfluidics and oil.