Monitoring and Characterizing the Finger Patterns Developed by Miscible Displacement in Fractured Heavy Oil Systems

作者：Shokrollahi Amin; Majidi Seyed Mohammad Javad; Ghazanfari Mohammad Hossein^*

来源：Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 2013, 52(31): 10853-10863.

DOI：10.1021/ie4013908

This work concerns experimentally quantifying finger behavior during miscible displacements in fractured porous media. A series of miscible tests were performed on five-spot fractured micromodels which were initially saturated with heavy crude oil, and the developed finger patterns were quantified using an image analysis technique. The results revealed that the numbers of macro fingers formed is well correlated with the square root of dimensionless time, while the rate of finger initiation is independent of fracture characteristics. The level of bypassed oil linearly decreases with dimensionless distance traveled by front precisely. The transient fractal dimension behavior experiences a minimum due to advancement of front in fractures, and subsequently, growth of side fingers. Variable transient behavior of fingers fractal dimension may suggest that miscible injection in fractured media does not obey fractal theory. Therefore, more care is required for upscaling of miscible displacements in fractured media using fractal characteristics.

• 出版日期2013-8-7