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Energy Procedia 61 (2014) 1589 – 1592

The 6th International Conference on Applied Energy – ICAE2014

A Study on Combination of Polymer and CO2 Flooding Using

Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Yongchen Songa,Pengfei Lva,Yu Liua, Lanlan Jianga,* , Yuechao Zhaoa,Zijian
Shena, Junlin Chena
a
Key Laboratory of Ocean Energy Utilization and Energy Conservation of Ministry of Education, Dalian University of
Technology, Dalian, Liaoning116024, China

Abstract

CO2-EOR is used to sequestrate carbon dioxide (CO2) and enhance oil recovery . This paper presented a study on
combination of polymer and CO2 flooding using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).Crude oil distribution and
saturation images were recorded. The fundamental characteristics of the flooding process, such as the piston-like
displacement front, the phenomena of channeling and fingering, homogenization of the oil saturation distribution
with CO2 injection, and the distribution of oil in porous media, can be accurately detected from MRI images. It was
shown that mobility ratio can be improved with increasing concentration and viscosity of polymer solution.
Supercritical CO2 displacement can enhance oil recovery evidently and reduce consumption of polymer solution
compared with polymer flooding. In addition, it can make up for the shortage of polymer displacement and
homogenize the oil saturation distribution in the bead-pack core. Above all, this study indicated that the combination
of polymer and CO2 flooding was viable and highly efficient.

©
© 2014
2014The TheAuthors. Published
Authors. by Elsevier
Published Ltd. This
by Elsevier Ltd.is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of ICAE
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of ICAE2014
Keywords: EOR ;CO2; Porous Media; Polymer; MRI

1. Introduction:

In the process of crude CO2 flooding, typically, the effective permeability of CO 2 in porous media is
greater than the effective permeability of crude oil, but its viscosity is far lower than oil, even in
supercritical state. The viscosity of CO2 is smaller than oil, which makes the mobility ratio of CO 2 and oil
relatively large. Great mobility ratio will generate fingering phenomenon and even channeling
phenomenon in the CO2 flooding, which will affect the sweep area of CO 2 and reducing the recovery of

Corresponding author. Tel.: +086-0411-84707100; fax: +086-0411-84708015

E-mail address: lanlan@dlut.edu.cn.

1876-6102 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of ICAE2014
doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2014.12.178
1590 Yongchen Song et al. / Energy Procedia 61 (2014) 1589 – 1592

crude oil. To control the mobility ratio and reduce fingering phenomenon, most drive projects take
alternating injection. However, this increase the amount of water and resulting in water lock phenomenon
which occurs in the reservoir. Moreover, CO2-saturated water will dissolve mineral rock formations and
induce fouling phenomenon. Hild et al suggested the reservoir polymer could improve CO2 flooding and
Zhang et al found the coupling immiscible CO2 technology and polymer injection could get better
recovery efficiency for heavy oils. This study provided a driving method that uses polymer flooding at
first and then CO2 flooding. Polymer can effectively reduce the mobility ratio of water and oil to enhance
the spreading area of aqueous solution and reduce the onrush phenomenon of injected water. Furthermore,
polymer flooding can also reduce the impact of permeability heterogeneity in reservoir condition, which
creates favorable Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) conditions for the follow-up of CO2 flooding. In this
study, we used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to observe the displacement processes including the
oil phase saturation of oil phase in displacement process and the factors affecting this changing.

2. Experimental apparatus and Procedure

A simplified schematic diagram of the experimental setup is shown in Fig 1. This experiment was
carried out using Varian NMR (400MHz, Varian, USA). The experimental setup consisted of two
sections the displacement process line and the temperature control circulation line. In the displacement
section, three high-pressure intermediate piston containers were used to store polymer solution and bound
water (MnCl2 solution). The container of crude oil use electric heating tape and a controller to keep the
temperature constant˄ T = 37.5 °C˅. An ISCO syringe pump injected the crude oil, bound water and the
polymer solution into the core holder from a piston container, and the other ISCO syringe pump was
responsible for CO2 storage injection under constant pressure. The cooling and heating process of CO 2
injection pump is controlled by circulation fluorescent oil (FC-40, 3M) using a thermostatic bath (F25-ME,
Julabo, German). The experimental pressure is controlled by a backpressure controller (BP-2080-M,
JASCO, Japan). Pressure and differential pressure transmitter were used to monitor and record the
pressure of flooding process. In temperature control section, the temperature of the sample was also
controlled by a thermostatic bath (FL300, Julabo) and was detected by a thermocouple. The porous media
was packed with glass sand (BZ-02,0.177–0.250 mm,AS-ONE, Co., Ltd., Japan). Crude oil used in the
experiment was from Daqing Oilfield in China and its density ρ is 805.0 kg/m3, viscosity μ is 105cp at
37.5 ć and standard atmospheric pressure. The polymer solution was made by polyacrylamide and
deionized water from a concentration of 0.50%, 1.0% and 1.5% .Polymer flooding with 0.05mL/min
under 9 Mpa and 37.5 °C was conducted then performed before supercritical CO2 (ScCO2) flooding. The
image was acquired continuously to record the decrease of oil saturation during the flooding. When the
signal intensity in MRI images had no change, we stopped the injection of the polymer solution and
ScCO2 was injected at 0.05 mL/min at same condition. We stopped the CO 2 flooding process until the
signal intensity became stable.

Fig. 1. Simplified schematic of the experimental set-up

 Yongchen Song et al. / Energy Procedia 61 (2014) 1589 – 1592 1591

3. Result and Conclusion

Fig. 2 shows the oil distribution during the flooding process of 1.0% polymer solution flooding (a~e)
and following ScCO2 flooding(f~h), Bright parts (white) of the images represent the high oil saturation
region, the darker parts (blue) represent lower oil saturation region. Fig. 3 gives the oil saturation
distribution during the process. Comparing with alone polymer flooding process, following ScCO2
displacement could enhance oil recovery evidently and make up for the shortage of polymer displacement
and homogenizes the oil saturation distribution. Due to the higher oil/CO 2 interfacial tension than the oil/
polymer interfacial tension, when was injected in porous media, the CO 2 was the first to sweep the
regions where interfacial tension was low and the residual oil saturation was high, and the ScCO2flooding
displaced mainly residual oil saturation in high oil saturation regions and homogenized and improved the
oil saturation distribution. In addition, the combination of polymer and ScCO2flooding could improve
mobility ratio and reduced the phenomenon of channeling and fingering, the final oil recovery increased
obviously .Tab.1 shows the residual oil saturations, total oil recovery efficiency for the three experiments.
As known from Tab.1, even at a low residual oil saturation after polymer flooding in Exp 3, the follow
ScCO2 flooding can still improve recovery ratio by 7.99%. The total recovery ratio is approximately equal
between Exp 1 and Exp 2. This means, in the case of obtaining the same oil recovery ratio, the
concentration can not only improve oil recovery ratio, but also reduce the consumption of polymer and
achieve CO2 geological storage. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide will arrive at higher residual oil saturation
region after polymer flooding, which not only makes up for the lack of polymer flooding but also improve
the phenomenon of uneven distribution of residual oil. This study has shown that the combination of
polymer and CO2 flooding is feasible and effective.

Table 1. Experimental conditions, residual oil saturations, total oil recovery factors data for three tests.

number Initial saturation(%) Polymer flooding(%) CO2 flooding(%) Total recovery efficiency(%)

Exp 1 76.54 69.25 54.26 45.74

Exp2 74.38 52.71 42.28 57.72

Exp3 76.43 32.74 24.75 75.25

(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h)

Fig. 2. Distribution of the crude oil saturation during polymer and CO2 flooding process(1.0%polymer solution flooding)
1592 Yongchen Song et al. / Energy Procedia 61 (2014) 1589 – 1592

1.0 O 1.0% Polymer solution flooding

CO2 flooding
0.9
A

Oil Satuation (Fraction)

0.8

0.7 B

0.6 C
D

0.5 F H
E

0.4
G
0.3
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 2000

Injection time (min) 

Fig. 3. Evolution of oil saturation profiles(1.0%polymer solution flooding)

Acknowledge

This paper was financially supported by the Major State Basic Research Development Program of
China (973 Program) (Grant No. 2011CB707304), the National Natural Science Foundation of China
(Grant Nos. 51006016, 51006017, 51106018 and 51106019).

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Biography
Pengfei Lv, born in 1990, graduate student dedicated to the study of CO2 geo-sequestration
and oil and gas production in Key Laboratory of Ocean Energy Utilization and Energy
Conservation of Ministry of Education, school of Energy and Power Engineering, Dalian
University of Technology.