Principal Investigator John Williams
In an oil reservoir, 20-40% of the oil can be recovered by primary development techniques. The rest remains trapped in the rock pores. Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques, such as water flooding, gas injection, chemical injection and thermal stimulation, optimistically recover an additional 10-20% of the oil. This still leaves almost half of the oil trapped in the rock pores. The Department of Energy (DOE) has estimated that if “next generation” EOR is applied, the United States could generate an additional 240 billion barrels of recoverable oil resources - over 30 years supply at the present US consumption rate of 20 million barrels per day. For comparison, the Middle East holds an estimated 685 billion barrels that are recoverable and the tar sands of Alberta 300 billion recoverable barrels of “heavy” oil, with over a trillion barrels potentially recoverable using enhanced methods. We are researching new EOR technologies by providing understanding of the fundamental physical processes within a reservoir, particularly at the pore scale. We are developing the computational algorithms for pore scale simulation of oil reservoirs based on multi-scale, multi-physics models. The work leverages “particle” models based on a partition of unity class of techniques, including SPH and DEM.