Abstract

Recovery factor of chemical flooding for heavy oil at the laboratory scale is always much higher than that at the field scale mainly due to reservoir heterogeneity, the interaction of viscous, gravity, and dispersive forces. Scale up analysis can serve as an effective way to predict field scale oil recovery based on lab experimental results. The key point of the scale up methods is dimensional analysis and inspectional analysis. Although the scale up method has been widely studied, seldom did they consider the heterogeneity and chemical adsorption and corresponding permeability change. None of the researchers studied the scaling groups for chemical flooding in heavy oil reservoirs. None of the previous researchers validated their scaling laws by both simulations and experiments.

The purpose of this research is as follow, to develop the scaling groups for chemical flooding (polymer, surfactant, alkaline and their combinations) for heavy oil; to obtain the oil recovery prediction model for chemical flooding in heavy oil reservoirs; to use the 2-D model lab results to predict the field-scale performance by considering field operation conditions and reservoir heterogeneities.