Optimization and Design of Carbon Dioxide Flooding

Abstract Increasing energy demand coupled with public concern for the environment has placed the oil industry in an awkward position as profit-making energy provider and protector of the environmental. Today fossil fuels are the most efficient at meeting the global energy needs but have the undesirable outcome of potentially harming the environment due to production of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide flooding of oil reservoirs is a proven method for increasing oil production by using the miscible interactions between reservoir oil and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide flooding is beneficial to the environment and to petroleum producers because it uses the harmful carbon dioxide as the main agent to increase oil production. The main challenge in using this technology is applying laboratory data to its design and optimization. The objective of this work is to develop a strategy for applying laboratory data to the design and optimization of carbon dioxide flooding process. To accomplish this, reservoir simulation studies were conducted based on carbon dioxide laboratory data. Carbon dioxide laboratory core flood results were studied and modeled using a reservoir simulator. Once there was a match between laboratory data and core flood simulations the results were used to simulate field scaled carbon dioxide flooding. Results of these simulation studies were used to perform optimization using adjoint based algorithms and non adjoint based algorithms. Adjoint based optimization algorithms require access to simulator code while non adjoint based algorithms do not require access to simulator code. A comparison of both methods is predented in this work to show their advantages and disadvantages. This work will address best practices in applying laboratory data to simulation and optimization studies. The work-flow presented in this work can be used to design and optimize field carbon dioxide floods. These results will serve as a basic guideline in applying laboratory data to full field carbon dioxide flood optimization.