Performance Evaluation of Ionic Liquids Using Numerical Simulation

Abstract

Given the rise in oil productivity from conventional and unconventional resources in Canada using Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), the need to understand and characterize these techniques, for the purpose of recovery optimization, has taken a prominent role in resource management. Chemical flooding has proved to be one of the most efficient EOR techniques. This study investigated the potential of employing Ionic Liquids (ILs) as alternative chemical agents for improving oil recovery. There is very little attention paid to employing this technique as well as few experimental and simulation studies. Consequently, very limited data are available. Since pilot and field studies are relatively expensive and time consuming, a numerical simulation study using CMG-STARS simulator was utilized to explore the efficiency of employing 1-Ethyl-3-Methyl-Imidazolium Acetate ([EMIM][Ac]) and 1-Benzyl-3-meth- limidazolium chloride ([BenzMIM][Cl]) with respect to improving medium oil recovery. Eight different lab-scale sandpack flooding experiments were selected to develop a numerical model to obtain the history matching of the experimental flooding results using CMG-CMOST. We observed that the main challenge was tuning the relative permeability curves to achieve a successful match for the oil recovery factor. Finally, a sensitivity study was performed to examine the effect of the chemical injection rate, the chemical concentration, the slug size, and the initiation time on oil recovery. The results showed a noticeable increase in the oil RF when injecting IL compared to conventional waterflooding.