SPE-179849-MS

Implementing a Water Soluble Solvent Based Enhanced Oil Recovery

Technology - Aspects of Field Development Planning
P. te Riele, C. Parsons, P. Boerrigter, J. Plantenberg, B. Suijkerbuijk, J. Burggraaf, A. Chernetsky, D. Boersma,
and R. Broos, Shell Global Solutions International B.V.

Copyright 2016, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE EOR Conference at Oil and Gas West Asia held in Muscat, Oman, 21–23 March 2016.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
In this paper we present a Shell developed, chemical EOR technique in which dimethyl ether (DME), a
widely-used industrial compound, is utilised as a miscible solvent in conjunction with conventional
waterflooding. The technology, laboratory results, PVT workflows and numerical aspects of DME
enhanced waterflooding have been reported recently. This paper describes various aspects of upscaling
from pattern scale production to field scale while conforming to various development constraints.
In a DME enhanced waterflood, advantage is taken of DME’s solubility in water and miscibility with
hydrocarbons: water is used as a carrier for DME during injection and upon contact with reservoir fluids,
DME preferentially partitions into the hydrocarbon phase thereby swelling and mobilising the oil phase.
This is followed by a DME-free water chase to recover the remaining mobile oil and DME. Residual oil
saturation after sweep is reduced, significantly below that typically achieved by waterflood alone.
Furthermore, the DME can be extracted from the produced wellstream fluids by partly non-standard
operations such as stripping, distillation and/or absorption processes, and re-used for injection.
The DME Enhanced Waterflooding (DEW) technique takes advantage of the unique solubility
properties of dimethyl ether to improve oil mobility and reduce residual oil saturations. Significant
research into the pressure-volume-temperature (PVT) behaviour of DME and DME/crude oil mixtures has
been carried out in recent years of which a summary is reported by Groot et al. (2016); in particular the
partitioning behaviour of the solvent and mixing rules for the various mass transfer properties affecting
mobility. The PVT-driven behaviour and the overall displacement efficiency of the DEW technique have
been observed in core flood experiments using both carbonate and clastic core plugs.
Considering the application of the DEW technique to a tertiary field development, the practical realities
of solvent flooding become more apparent. In field developments that involve the injection of DME and
solvents in general, solvent recycling and reinjection is mostly required. This is a result of the inherently
high value of the solvents and is needed to increase the utilization of the solvents manufactured locally
or imported. This paper describes the requirements from both subsurface as well as surface point of view
to make a successful field solvent EOR development possible.
2 SPE-179849-MS

Introduction
The application of solvents to improve oil recovery has been a focus of industry research for several
decades. In 1960, Gatlin and Slobod (1960) published results of their experiments to define the
mechanism of miscible displacement in porous media by water-driven slugs of isopropyl and methyl
alcohol, moreover proposing that the displacement process was essentially piston-like. Taber, Kamath and
Reed (1961) disputed the simplicity of the process proposed by Gatlin and Slobod, but expanded on this
research with investigations into the phase behavior characteristics of alcohol-oil-brine systems and the
differences in displacement performance between solvents with a preference for solubility in the oleic or
aqueous phases. Developing an overall understanding of the phase behavior of other solvent systems, the
impact of instable displacement and of more operationally-driven aspects such as slug size, and solvent
composition became a focus of additional works by Taber and Meyer (1964), Sandrea and Stahl (1965),
and Totanji and Ali (1972). Common to all this work, was an agreement that oil recovery could be
significantly enhanced, and was highly dependent on the phase behavior of the solvent system in the
reservoir fluids and preferential solubility differences between phases.
Dimethyl ether (DME) is a widely known industrial chemical used historically as a fuel additive and
aerosol propellant. In recent years, DME has seen growing use as a direct replacement for transport fuels
and in domestic applications for cooking or heating. Much like LPG, DME is gaseous at ambient
conditions, but liquefies under moderate pressure or cooling. DME is nearly ideally miscible with
hydrocarbons, and thanks to it’s slight polarity, ␮⫽1.3D (Nelson et al, 1967), it is also partially soluble
in water. It is precisely this combination of properties that enable a unique and elegant oil recovery
mechanism.

Table 1—Physical properties of dimethyl ether and propane

(GESTIS Substance Database)
Physical Property DME Propane

Chemical formula CH3OCH3 C3H8

Molecular weight (g/mol) 46.07 44.10
Lower heating value (MJ/kg) 28.43 46.4
Boiling point (°C) ⫺24.8 ⫺42.1
Critical temperature (°C) 126.9 96.8
Critical pressure (bar) 53.7 42.6
Liquid density @25°C (kg/m3) 668 509
Relative vapour density (sg.air) 1.63 1.55
Vapour Pressure @20°C (bar) 5.10 8.33
Flash point (°C) ⫺42.2 ⫺104
Lower-Upper Explosive Limit (vol%) 2.7-32.0 1.7-10.8
Solubility in Water @20°C (g/l) 70 0.075

In light of the historical research on solvent-enhanced oil recovery, and recognizing the potential
presented by DME, extensive research and development studies into the use of DME for EOR purposes
were carried out. Chernetsky et al. (2015) documented the fundamental research activities relating to the
phase behavior of DME in typical brine-crude oil systems, with particular focus on partitioning of the
solvent between aqueous and hydrocarbon phases. Additional measurements were carried out to establish
mixing rules for transport properties of solvent/water and solvent/crude oil systems. Coreflood experi-
ments using both clastic and carbonate core plugs were used to demonstrate the recovery improvements
enabled by addition of DME in a tertiary mode. Core plugs were sourced from outcrops and from cored
wells in reservoirs considered for an eventual field technology demonstration trial (Alkindi et al, 2016).
SPE-179849-MS 3

The envisioned method of application is straightforward: water is used as a carrier for DME during
injection and upon contact with reservoir fluids, DME directly partitions into the hydrocarbon phase
thereby swelling and mobilizing the oil. As a result, recovery is increased and remaining oil saturation
after sweep is significantly reduced, often below that typically achieved by waterflood alone. The
performance of DEW is well understood by the PVT description of DME partitioning between water and
oil (Groot et al. 2016) and has shown to be very effective in interpreting corefloods (Chernetsky et al.
2015). Furthermore, the DME remaining in the solvent/oil phase after flooding can be partially recovered
by a water chase, extracted from the produced water stream, and re-used for injection. Overall the net
utilization of the solvent in this DME-enhanced waterflooding technique (DEW) is high, making it
competitive with other established EOR processes in terms of Unit Technical Cost.
In a full field DME enhanced waterflood delopment, recovery and reinjection of the backproduced
DME is required. Due to the inherently high value of DME and is needed to increase the utilization of the
DME manufactured locally or imported. The concept of recycle and re-injection of produced solvent was
first published by Block and Donovan (1961). The high value of DME also puts additional constraints
based on project economics. The time between the valuable DME gets injected and the incremental oil is
actually produced should be minimized. Combined with the requirement to recycle the backproduced
DME, this will result in production profiles being substanially different compared to primary or
conventional waterflooding projects. Due to these additional constraints for a DME development, the
production profiles will depend primarily on the actual phasing of patterns rather than single pattern
performance. This paper describes the requirements and impact of these additional constraints, from both
subsurface as well as surface point of view, to optimize an economically attractive integrated full field
solvent EOR development.

The DME-Enhanced Waterflooding Concept

A DME enhanced waterflood (DEW) utilizes the advantage of water solubility and oil miscibility of DME
by co-injecting a limited slug of DME dissolved in water into a reservoir. Figure 1 shows conceptually
how a DME enhanced waterflood works, both at reservoir and pore scales. After primary depletion (1) and
waterflooding (2), the target reservoir is at remaining oil saturation (ROS). When the injected mixture (3)
contacts the oil, DME partitions into the trapped oil (4), reduces the oil viscosity and swells the oil - a
mechanism already well understood for tertiary CO2 floods. By contrast, the DME swells the oil in volume
approximately four times more than CO2 at similar mass injected. The saturation of the oleic phase is
thereby increased, making the oil phase mobile (5), which is then produced by immiscible displacement
of the injected water. At the end of the DME-rich injected water slug, a residual saturation of trapped
oil/DME again remains (6). The residual DME fraction in that trapped residual fluid is still soluble in
water, and thus the remaining DME can be recovered by a waterflood (chase) and recovered from the
produced water at surface for re-use as the process is repeated in other areas of the field or fields nearby.
4 SPE-179849-MS

Figure 1—Schematic representation of DME-enhanced tertiary flooding at reservoir and pore scales. Phases of activity are mapped
against the experimental results of a sandstone coreflood undergoing the same sequence of flooding events

DME Enhanced Waterflood Field Development Concept

Any DME enhanced waterflooding development will have a number of similarities irrespective of the
considered reservoir or field location. This general development is depicted in Figure 2.

Figure 2—Schematic development lay-out for a solvent development highlighting the main areas of 1) solvent manufacturing and/or
import, 2) subsurface recovery of oil and solvent and 3) surface treatment of produced fluids and recovery of solvent for re-injection
SPE-179849-MS 5

In most cases, DME will not be available on site. DME therefore needs to be imported from outside
the field, or needs to be manufactured locally in which case feedstocks will need to be imported. Once the
DME is available for injection, it will be injected into the reservoir through the injector wells of a, most
often, managed pattern flood. Reservoir management is of key importance as minimizing subsurface
solvent loss is a key driver for any commercially feasible development. As DME is water soluble, it is
technically feasible to recover all DME from the formation. However, even when the water chase in a
pattern development is designed to effectively recover the solvent, losses are inevitable due to dispersion
(pattern, heterogeneities), losses to aquifers and fractures, etc. combined with well- and development
economic limits. Also, based on economic considerations, the DME subsurface residence time needs to
be managed in order to minimize the duration between solvent injection and oil recovery. For this reason,
a DME development will often have a dense well spacing with short pore volume injection times when
compared to a conventional waterflood. Produced fluids will be processed to recover the solvent from the
produced stream for reuse in existing and new patterns. In this way, the overall DME utilization is
increased for the development. The duration and timing of single pattern DME recovery will determine
the amount of DME available for re-injection as a function of time. Based on the DME recovery profile
from this pattern, a full field development utilizing DME recovery and re-injection can be constructed.
This pattern phasing, the resulting production profiles, DME rates and utilization are schematically
depicted in Figure 3.

Figure 3—Schematic development concept drawing for a typical solvent development of 21 patterns. Recycling and reuse of produced
solvent will result in an increase in number of solvent patterns when fresh solvent is supplied. When manufacturing or import will stop,
the development will continue based on back produced and recycled solvent. Top: Schematic drawing of number of active patterns with
an example ~15-30% total solvent loss fraction (every 3 patterns can feed approximately another 2 new patterns). Below: key
performance indicators of the development with utilization (red), solvent (green) and water/oil rates

Figure 3 shows that the number of patterns is increasing as long as the supply of new DME is
maintained. Once the supply of DME manufacturing or import has stopped, the total number of patterns
decreases due to surface and subsurface losses of DME. Figure 3 also highlights the importance of DME
recovery for solvent utilization. Even though the utilization is improving during the DME supply phase,
a significant step change in utilization is obtained once the development continues completely on recycled
DME.
6 SPE-179849-MS

An estimate of the number of patterns that initially will be brought on stream (i.e. no DME available
yet from produced streams) can be determined by:

where PI is Patterns Initially active, MFcap is the manufacturing capacity (in mass rate units), ␳resDME
is the density of the DME in the liquid (or gas) phase at reservoir conditions, VDMEfrac is the DME fraction
in the liquid (or gas) phase, nw is the number of injector wells per pattern and Qw_res is the single well rate.
At the same time, a plateau in number of patterns will be achieved when the DME manufacturing capacity
will be equal to the subsurface loss rate.

in which ␧ is the solvent loss fraction, PVtot is the total slugsize injected (DME slug and water chase)
and PVDMEinj is the DME injection slugsize. Whether this plateau number of patterns is achieved is
depending on the actual single pattern duration and DME loss fractions. For a DME development where
the pattern losses can be kept small, plateau production profiles are not expected and a peaked production
profile as schematically depicted in Figure 3 will be obtained.
For many EOR projects, utilization is defined as the volume of oil produced per volume of EOR agent
injected. With DME recovery, recycling and re-injection being essential for a full field development,
utilization needs to be expressed differently as net utilization. For a DME development, the Net Utilization
Factor (NUF) is expressed as the incremental volume of oil produced per volume of DME lost during
operation of a single pattern (subsurface and surface). A similar summary of various types of utilization,
including net utilization, is provided by Faltinson and Gunter for CO2 EOR projects (2011).
When the pattern subsurface and surface losses are known, the net utilization factor can be obtained.
If additionally the injection volume required to inject and recover the DME can be determined, either by
dynamic simulations or piloting [Alkindi et al. 2016], the produced water volume can be calculated by
mass balance, in this case assuming subsurface voidage replacement:

wherein the PV’s are the pore volumes of the respective phases at subsurface conditions, BDME is the
formation volume factor of DME (which needs to be linked to the surface and subsurface volumes used
for calculating NUF), Bo is the oil formation volume factor and RF the oil recovery factor during pattern
operation. An indication for the average BSW of the development can be obtained by using NUF,
produced oil volumes and injection pore volumes. In conclusion, based on basic pattern performance data,
a high level development plan can be constructed that will reveal:
● Required manufacturing capacity to complete DEW over the field zones of interest
● Initial fluid handling and DME processing capacity required
● Maximum expected fluid handling and DME processing capacity required
● Average BSW and DME concentration throughout the development
● Well density, number of wells required and drilling schedule
SPE-179849-MS 7

Surface Facilities Technology Enabling DME Enhanced Waterflooding

A DEW field development requires a number of surface facility elements to enable an optimal DEW
flood:
● Options for DME supply, including local or remote manufacturing from available feedstocks, in
some cases requiring creation of an appropriate supply chain
● DME-water injection facilities including injection water treatment, DME storage and handling,
DME-water mixing, injection facilities and distribution of the injection fluids to the injection wells
● Facilities for simultaneously recovering DME at surface from the produced fluids and bringing the
produced fluids to the required specifications
As DME is a global commodity, several commercial DME manufacturing processes using a variety of
feedstocks are already available (DME Handbook, 2007). Options for manufacturing of DME are beyond
the scope of this paper, however, to support the required injection volumes for DEW developments on the
scales being considered for field applications, these developments would require a world-scale DME
manufacturing plant. In this work, more attention is given to the subject of DME recovery from the
production stream. Given the value of DME, efficient recovery from the produced fluids and recycling of
solvent is paramount in order to sustain economic hydrocarbon production across the life cycle of a DEW
field development.
The schematic in Figure 4 presents one of the possible variants for a DME recovery process. Produced
fluids are routed to 3 phase separator line-up in which the vapour phase containing light hydrocarbons and
the majority of the DME that are flashed out of solution. The amount of DME in the vapour phase will
strongly depend on the temperature and pressure at which the separators are operated. DME is stripped
out the separated oil and water phases in subsequent columns using hydrocarbon gas. The DME
containing gas streams are routed through a DME recovery column where the DME is recovered using
fresh water. With such DME recovery system, the DME present in all phases is recovered with an overall
efficiency of ~90%. The exact efficiency depends on many parameters such as oil composition, brine
salinity, BSW, etc. and will vary over field life. Therefore, it requires detailed process simulations to
reveal development specific recovery efficiencies, heat and mass balance, energy requirements, and a
range of equipment design considerations. The resultant DME/water stream from the absorber column is
used for reinjection by adding the manufactured DME to achieve the required injection concentration.
Once the supply of manufactured DME has stopped, a distiller is added to the surface line up to produce
pure DME from the water stream originating of the DME gas recovery column. This pure DME will be
mixed with a DME free water source to achieve again injection concentrations.
8 SPE-179849-MS

Figure 4 —Schematic flow diagram example of a DME recovery process

Alternative development surface constraints

As an example of an economic optimization for a DEW field development, we will consider the balance
between DME manufacturing and separation & recycling capital expenditure. When manufacturing
capital expenditure (CAPEX) is high compared to the overall CAPEX of separation and recycling, it is
too costly to underutilize the manufacturing capacity and this capacity will therefore be fully utilized to
recover oil as quickly as possible. The example in Figure 3 showed a development with a typical constant
supply rate that fully utilizes the manufacturing capacity until all required solvent is produced. The
resulting production profile will increase in both water and oil rate until manufacturing is stopped after
which decline sets in. This constant supply rate of solvent will therefore result in significant underutili-
zation of production and recycling facilities. On the other hand, depending on the exact timing of the peak
production levels, the separation and recycling facilities can be installed in several trains.
When production and recycling facilities CAPEX is high relative to the CAPEX of supply and
manufacturing, it might be beneficial to switch from a constant solvent manufacturing constraint to a
tapered DME manufacturing profile. A plateau production profile can only be achieved by starting the
development with a high solvent manufacturing rate and reducing this rate over time. As a result the
manufacturing facilities will only initially be fully utilized. Figure 5 shows a schematic representation the
impact of tapered manufacturing rates on production rates.
SPE-179849-MS 9

Figure 5—Schematic drawing of a solvent development concept of 21 patterns with a constraint on produced fluid handling capacity.
The tapering down of solvent manufactured or imported is required achieve plateau production and results in underutilization of
solvent manufacturing or import facilities

As a consequence of tapering the manufacturing or import facility size, the produced fluid handling
capacity will be smaller when production is maintained throughout the same period. The exact balance of
manufacturing and processing facility CAPEX will depend on the regional availability of feedstocks and
the manufacturing routes chosen. Additionally, synergy fields need to be taken into account that in a case
of high CAPEX manufacturing could ensure full facility utilization while maintaining plateau production
for each separate development. Many other intermediate development concepts with different constraints
can be developed.

Simplified profile phasing for full field economic screening

The exact details of solvent injection, oil mobilization, oil production and solvent recovery depend on
many factors. However, many of the full field development aspects discussed before can be determined
without having all these exact details. A proprietary, mass balance based screening tool was developed
that determined the full field production profiles based on the considerations discussed before, using only
simple input data. The key additional value of such a screening tool is that the profile build-up can be
determined based on pattern duration and solvent recovery timing and whether ultimately plateau
production is obtained. The output for 2 field development examples are given in Figure 6 and the key
parameters used for these developments are given in Table 2.
10 SPE-179849-MS

Figure 6 —2 examples of resulting production profiles based on described development considerations. Development parameters are
summarized in Table 2

Table 2—Reservoir and key development parameters used for

Figure 6
Parameters Example 1 Example 2

Development target STOIIP (MMbbl) 120 450

Pattern dimensions (m2) 150⫻250 100⫻100
Number of patterns in development 42 590
Single well injection rate (m3/day) 500 200
Incremental oil recovery factor (-) 18% 15%
Injection slugsize (PV) 0.7 0.45
DME injection concentration (%mol) 8 10
Chase slugsize (PV) 1.6 2.3
DME loss fraction per pattern (-) 22% 30%
DME manufacturing capacity (T/day) 150 650

These 2 examples show the different considerations discussed in this paper for a small field devel-
opment with large patterns and a large field development with small patterns. For the small field example,
it can be seen that with the chosen parameters, no plateau for production is obtained. On the contrary, by
having a 30% manufacturing overcapacity, a plateau type production profile can be obtained for more than
10 years.
Conclusions
This paper describes several field development planning aspects of a novel, Shell developed, chemical
enhanced oil recovery technology. The technology is based on co-injection of water soluble dimethyl ether
(DME) and water into a hydrocarbon formation where the solvent partitions between the remaining oil and
injected water. As a result, the oleic phase swells while the viscosity of the oil is lowered, mobilizing the
oil towards the producer. A DME-free water chase slug recovers the DME from the oleic phase enabling
high recovery efficiencies of the DME from the formation. The process has proven to be very effective
in laboratory tests, and results can be upscaled using the obtained PVT and transport properties for
forecasting pattern performance in a reservoir setting. To enable economic developments, DME needs be
made available for re-injectrion by surface DME recovery from the produced streams. This makes the
actual upscaling from pattern performance to full field production forecasts particularly complex. The
considerations described in this paper provide a guide on the impact of DME recycling and pattern phasing
on production profiles, drilling sequence and overall development DME utilization. Many aspects of
SPE-179849-MS 11

single pattern performance, such as DME dispersion and oil rates, will have an impact on the overall
resulting full field production forecasts. However, based on a few basic parameters of a development, an
accurate forecast can already be obtained for screening purposes and development optimization.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Petroleum Development Oman and especially Abdullah Alkindi for their
valuable input into the maturation and implementation of the workflows described.

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