Abstract
CO2 geosequestration in oil reservoirs is an economically attractive solution as it can be combined with enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR). However, the effectiveness of the associated three-phase displacement processes has not been tested at the micrometer pore scale, which determines the overall reservoir-scale fluid dynamics and thus CO2-EOR project success. We thus imaged such displacement processes in situ in 3-D with X-ray microcomputed tomography at high resolution at reservoir conditions and found that oil extraction was enhanced substantially, while a significant residual CO2 saturation (13.5%) could be achieved in oil-wet rock. Statistics of the residual CO2 and oil clusters are also provided; they are similar to what is found in analogue two-phase systems although some details are different, and displacement processes are significantly more complex.
RAS ID
30212
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
1-1-2019
School
School of Engineering
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Publisher
Blackwell
Comments
Iglauer, S., Paluszny, A., Rahman, T., Zhang, Y., Wülling, W., & Lebdev, M. (2019). Residual trapping of CO2 in an oil‐filled, oil‐wet sandstone core: results of three‐phase pore scale imaging. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(20), 11146-11154. Available here