Transport Modelling of Multi-Phase Fluid Flow in Porous Media for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract

This article studies the combined effect of spatial heterogeneity and capillary pressure on the saturation of two fluids during the injection of immiscible nanoparticles. Various literature review exhibited that the nanoparticles are helpful in enhancing the oil recovery by varying several mechanisms, like wettability alteration, interfacial tension, disjoining pressure and mobility control. Multiphase modelling of fluids in porous media comprise balance equation formulation, and constitutive relations for both interphase mass transfer and pressure saturation curves. A classical equation of advection-dispersion is normally used to simulate the fluid flow in porous media, but this equation is unable to simulate nanoparticles flow due to the adsorption effect which happens. Several modifications on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) have been made to increase the number of unknown variables. The simulation results indicated the successful transportation of nanoparticles in two phase fluid flow in porous medium which helps in decreasing the wettability of rocks and hence increasing the oil recovery. The saturation, permeability and capillary pressure curves show that the wettability of the rocks increases with the increasing saturation of wetting phase (brine).