Dominant mechanisms of multi-phase flow in non-thermal processes for enhanced heavy oil recovery

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Heavy oil development has started to play an important role in Canada's energy in the 21st century. The heavy oil (with viscosities up to 100,000 mPa.s) deposits in western Canada are significant; however, the development of in-situ recovery processes after primary production is challenging. Waterflooding has long been the most cost-effective recovery technique for conventional oil following primary production. Expanding its application to viscous heavy oil reservoirs has encountered difficulties: for example, waterfloods in western Canadian heavy oil reservoirs all exhibit very poor sweep efficiency. Waterflood theory for conventional oil has failed to predict the field performance of heavy oil waterfloods. Therefore, fundamental study of the mechanisms of multiphase flow in heavy oil recovery is essential to the development of in-situ heavy oil processes.      In this proposed research, I will study the dominant mechanisms of multiphase flow during waterflooding in heavy oil reservoirs, including fingering of water and trapping of oil, flow of dispersions (oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions and foamy oil) through oil sands, the relative permeabilities for brine-heavy oil-gas flow in oil sands, and enhanced waterflooding for heavy oil by using non-thermal methods. I plan to extend this research to field application by incorporating the developed fundamental theories and models into reservoir simulation for designing field waterflood and predicting their performance, and for enhancing heavy oil recovery. I propose to conduct systematic experiments to gain insight into the complex displacement processes of heavy oil in porous media and perform numerical modelling for heavy oil development.      In Canada, most of the heavy oil reservoirs are fast approaching their economic limits of production. Primary and waterflood methods may generally recover at best 8 to 10% of the heavy oil initially in place. The proposed research is of the most practical significance to heavy oil development. The results of this research are also applicable to the recovery of oil contaminants in soils and groundwater in environmental engineering.