A review of CO2 storage in geological formations emphasizing modeling,monitoring and capacity estimation approaches

The merits of CO2 capture and storage to the environmental stability of our world should not be underestimated as emissions of greenhouse gases cause serious problems.It represents the only technology that might rid our atmosphere of the main anthropogenic gas while allowing for the continuous use of the fossil fuels which still power today’s world.Underground storage of CO2 involves the injection of CO2 into suitable geological formations and the monitoring of the injected plume over time,to ensure containment.Over the last two or three decades,attention has been paid to technology developments of carbon capture and sequestration.Therefore,it is high time to look at the research done so far.In this regard,a high-level review article is required to provide an overview of the status of carbon capture and sequestration research.This article presents a review of CO2 storage technologies which includes a background of essential concepts in storage,the physical processes involved,modeling procedures and simulators used,capacity estimation,measuring monitoring and verification techniques,risks and challenges involved and field-/pilot-scale projects.It is expected that the present review paper will help the researchers to gain a quick knowledge of CO2 sequestration for future research in this field.

Enhanced oil recovery by nonionic surfactants considering micellization, surface, and foaming properties

Surfactants for enhanced oil recovery are important to study due to their special characteristics like foam generation,lowering interfacial tension between oleic and aqueous phases,and wettability alteration of reservoir rock surfaces.Foam is a good mobility control agent in enhanced oil recovery for improving the mobility ratio.In the present work,the foaming behavior of three nonionic ethoxylated surfactants,namely Tergitol 15-S-7,Tergitol 15-S-9,and Tergitol 15-S-12,was studied experimentally.Among the surfactants,Tergitol 15-S-12 shows the highest foamability.The effect of Na Cl concentration and synthetic seawater on foaming behavior of the surfactants was investigated by the test-tube shaking method.The critical micelle concentrations of aqueous solutions of the different nonionic surfactants were measured at 300 K.It was found that the critical micelle concentrations of all surfactants also increased with increasing ethylene oxide number.Dynamic light scattering experiments were performed to investigate the micelle sizes of the surfactants at their respective critical micelle concentrations.Core flooding experiments were carried out in sand packs using the surfactant solutions.It was found tha t22% additional oil was recovered in the case of all the surfactants over secondary water flooding.Tergitol 15-S-12exhibited the maximum additional oil recovery which is more than 26%after water injection.

Modeling of flow of oil-in-water emulsions through porous media

Formation and flow of emulsions in porous media are common in all enhanced oil recovery tech- niques. In most cases, oil-in-water （O/W） emulsions are formed in porous media due to oil-water interaction. Even now, detailed flow mechanisms of emulsions through porous media are not well understood. In this study, variation of rate of flow of O/W emulsions with pressure drop was studied experimentally, and rheological pa- rameters were calculated. The pressure drop increases with an increase in oil concentration in the O/W emulsion due to high viscosity. The effective viscosity of the emulsion was calculated from the derived model and expressed as a function of shear rate while flowing through porous media. Flow of O/W emulsions of different concentrations was evaluated in sand packs of different sand sizes. Emulsions were characterized by analyzing their stability, rheological properties, and tem- perature effects on rheological properties.

An overview of chemical enhanced oil recovery and its status in India

India is currently producing crude oil from matured fields because of insufficient discoveries of new fields.Therefore,in order to control the energy crisis in India,enhanced oil recovery(EOR)techniques are required to reduce the import of crude from the OPEC(Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries).This review mentions chemical EOR techniques(polymers,surfactants,alkali,nanoparticles,and combined alkali-surfactant-polymer flooding)and operations in India.Chemical EOR methods are one of the most efficient methods for oil displacement.The efficiency is enhanced by interfacial tension(IFT)reduction using surfactants and alkali,and mobility control of injected water is done by adding a polymer to increase the volumetric sweep efficiency.This paper also reviews the current trend of chemical EOR,prospects of chemical EOR in Indian oilfields,the development of chemical EOR in India with their challenges raising with economics,and screening criteria for chemical EOR implementation on the field scale.Furthermore,the review gives a brief idea about chemical EOR implementation in Indian oilfields in future prospects to increase the additional oil recovery from existing depleted fields to reduce the import of crude oil.The outcome of this review depicts all chemical EOR operations and recovery rates both at the laboratory scale and field scale around the country.The additional recovery rates are compared from various chemical EOR methods like conventional chemical flooding methods and conventional chemicals combined with nanoparticles on a laboratory scale.The development of chemical EOR in the past few decades and the EOR policy given by the government of India has been mentioned in this review.The analysis provides an idea about enhanced recovery screening and implementation of chemical EOR methods in existing fields will significantly reduce the energy crisis in India.

Effects of nanoparticles, polymer and accelerator concentrations, and salinity on gelation behavior of polymer gel systems for water shut-off jobs in oil reservoirs

Excess water production is one of the crucial complications in the oil industry,leading to a rapid decline in oil production.To overcome this problem,different polymer gels are used to block the water's path to reduce water production.In the present work,polymer gel systems were prepared with polymers namely partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide(PHPA),organic crosslinkers like hexamine,and hydroquinone with the incorporation of silica and alumina nanoparticles.Nanoparticles are used to enhance the stability of the gel framework in high salinity and high temperature reservoir environment.When designing the polymer gel system,factors such as pH,thermal stability,brine composition,injection rate,and chemical concentration were considered.Concentrations of PHPA and nanoparticles were varied from 1 to 2 wt% and 0.25e1.0 wt% respectively for the preparation of different gel systems.The concentration of the organic crosslinker was extended from 5000 to 11000 ppm for investigating the effect on gelation time.Brine concentration was chosen from 2 to 8 wt% to find the impact of high salinity.Succinic acid as an accelerator was also used to study the effect on gelation time,and it was found that the gelation time is reduced as the concentration of succinic acid increases.The prepared polymer solution was taken in a test tube and was kept inside a hot air oven at 95℃ to perceive the gelation time and nature of the produced gel.Results showed that nanoparticles do not influence the gelation time,but they considerably affect gel stability.However,concentrations of polymer,accelerator,and salt(salinity)have significant effects on the gelation behavior of the gel systems.

Investigations on the relationship among the porosity,permeability and pore throat size of transition zone samples in carbonate reservoirs using multiple regression analysis,artificial neural network and adaptive neuro-fuzzy interface system

Finding an accurate method for estimating permeability aside from well logs has been a difficult task for many years.The most commonly used methods targeted towards regression technique to understand the correlation between pore throat radii,porosity and permeability are Winland and Pittman equation approaches.While these methods are very common among petrophysicists,they do not give a good prediction in certain cases.Consequently,this paper investigates the relationship among porosity,permeability,and pore throat radii using three methods such as multiple regression analysis,artificial neural network(ANN),and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system(ANFIS)for application in transition zone permeability modeling.Firstly,a comprehensive mercury injection capillary pressure(MICP)test was conducted using 228 transition zone carbonate core samples from a field located in the Middle-East region.Multiple regression analysis was later performed to estimate the permeability using pore throat and porosity measurement.For the ANN,a two-layer feed-forward neural network with sigmoid hidden neurons and a linear output neuron was used.The technique involves training,validation,and testing of input/output data.However,for the ANFIS method,a hybrid optimization consisting of least-square and backpropagation gradient descent methods with a subtractive clustering technique was used.The ANFIS combines both the artificial neural network and fuzzy logic inference system(FIS)for the training,validation,and testing of input/output data.The results show that the best correlation for the multiple regression technique is achieved for pore throat radii with 35%mercury saturation(R35).However,for both the ANN and ANFIS techniques,pore throat radii with 55%mercury saturation(R55)gives the best result.Both the ANN and ANFIS are later found to be more effective and efficient and thus recommended as compared with the multiple regression technique commonly used in the industry.

Comparative studies on numerical sensitivity of different scenarios of enhanced oil recovery by water-alternating-gas(CO_(2))injection

Enhanced oil recovery by CO_(2) injection technology(CO_(2)-EOR)plays a crucial role in enhancing oil production and the permanent sequestration of anthropogenic CO_(2) in depleted oil reservoirs.However,the availability of CO_(2) in oil field locations and its mobility in contrast with reservoir fluids are prime challenges in CO_(2)-EOR.The cost of CO_(2) and its availability at the oil fields has prompted investigations on efficient injection of CO_(2) at the fields to achieve the best sweep efficiency possible.Injection strategies such as water-alternating-gas(WAG),simultaneous vertical and horizontal WAG,simultaneous water injection into the aquifer and vertical WAG,water and gas injection simultaneously but separately(SS-WAG),and water and gas injection simultaneously but not separately(SNS-WAG)play a significant role,as well as the purity of CO_(2).In this work,the significance of the above criteria was investigated indi-vidually and in combination.The coupled sequence of injection rate,soaking time,WAG ratio,and purity of injected CO_(2) for enhancement of oil production were delineated.A realistic reservoir simulation model conceptualizing the CO_(2)-EOR system with five spot injection patterns was developed by the company CMG.The history-matched model that was developed was used to investigate the sensitivity of the coupled effects to the criteria listed above on oil recovery.Numerical investigations quantitatively emphasized that purity and soaking time of CO_(2) have an inverse effect in the oil production rate and that SNS-WAG resulted in a better oil production rate than SS-WAG.

Experimental and simulation studies for optimization of waterealternating-gas(CO2)flooding for enhanced oil recovery

The paper deals with the screening of injection of water-alternating-gas(WAG)to tap the residual oil saturation left in the reservoir by over and above the water flooding.The detailed mineralogical composition has been studied by X-ray diffraction(XRD)method along with the petrophysical parameters to see their impacts of flow on Himmatnagar(India)sandstone.Saturates,aromatics,resins,and asphaltenes present in the crude oil were determined by ASTM procedure.Minimum miscibility pressure of CO2 with the crude oil was determined and it has been found at 1254 psi based on thermodynamic software.Different WAG ratios of 1:1,1.5:1 and 2:1 have been applied for EOR during studies.Simulation on water injection followed by CO2 has been performed for investigation of the WAG process efficiency.A total 2 cycles of WAG injection was done with water flow rate of 1 ml/min and gas injection pressure around 1250 psi to achieve the better contact miscibility.The experimental data has been generated,compiled and interpreted during different cycles of WAG process.It was observed that WAG ratio 2:1 exhibits highest additional oil recovery around 34%of original oil in place.Increasing WAG ratio yields more additional oil recovery.