Designer emulsions for enhanced oil recovery

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An astounding amount of petroleum still remains locked in the reservoirs and heavy oil fields that are considered depleted in terms of traditional extraction technologies in Alberta and Saskatchewan. Emulsion flooding is a potential enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique, which may facilitate release of this remaining heavy oil. Specially designed oil-in-water emulsions will be employed as low energy non-thermal EOR flooding agents. Diamond QC Technologies Inc., a fully owned subsidiary of Quadrise Canda Corporation, is aiming to develop this technology as part of its multi-year R&D project on oil-in-water emulsions in fuels and oil and gas technology. The company specializes in creation of stable oil-in-water emulsions employing heavy oil, bitumen, and pentane precipitated asphaltenes. To ensure success of the process employing the emulsion formulations developed by Diamond QC Technologies, the goal of the proposed project is to elucidate how the formation oil, flooding emulsion, pore water, and solid phases interact within the porous structures of the reservoirs, and how to optimize the emulsion formulations to maximize oil recovery. The collective expertise of four academic researchers collaborating with Diamond QC Technologies researchers will be focused toward attaining a fundamental understanding of the pore-scale physical and chemical processes underlying this EOR method. The proposed study will provide fundamental insights into emulsion based EOR, and spearhead major improvements in pore-scale property and transport models used in reservoir simulators. The acquired knowledge base will be instrumental in studying the viability of oil-in-water emulsions as EOR stimulants. The success of the study can potentially bring back to life the heavy oil industry in Saskatchewan by introducing a new EOR technology and open up new opportunities for heavy oil exploration in Alberta.