Flow Characteristics Through Gas Alternating Gas Injection During Enhanced Gas Recovery

Gas and liquid flooding using carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N2), or brine solution have become one of the promising enhanced gas (EGR) and oil recovery (EOR) technologies for residual hydrocarbons (HCs) enhancement in conventional oil and gas reservoir respectively. However, the flow mechanism between the displacing and displaced fluids are not yet clear, especially for the novel gas alternating gas injection method adopted in this study. This experimental study investigates the flow mechanism of N2-CO2-CH4 through gas alternating gas injection techniques in consolidated rocks during EGR. The research presents a better flow behaviour characteristic using a novel N2 alternating CO2 during EGR. These values were used in determining the optimum injection rate with the minimum in situ mixing and high displacement front. An experimental laboratory core flooding, experiment was done to imitate a detailed process of an unsteady state N2-CO2-CH4 displacement in Bandera grey core sample at 35-40°C of temperature, 1500 psig of pressure, and at 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0 ml/min N2 alternating CO2 injection rates to evaluate the displacement flow characteristics, such as diffusion coefficient, dispersion coefficient, density and viscosity, mobility ratio, and dispersivity. The CO2 was injected after 4-5 cm3 of N2 injection throughout the runs at the experimental condition. The findings indicated that gas alternating gas injection technique presents a better flow behaviour characteristic compared to that of individual CO2 or N2 injection. Such prominent behaviour was observed at 0.4 ml/min injection, with higher displacement front and longer CO2 breakthrough time. The mobility ratio of N2-CO2-CH4 was lower compared to that of N2-CH4 and CO2-CH4. This was due to the inclusion of nitrogen which acts as a barrier between the CO2 and displaced CH4. The later contributed significantly for the delayed in CO2 breakthrough especially at lower injection rates (0.2-0.4 ml/min) during the gas alternating gas EGR process. The overall molecular diffusion coefficients were found to be 22.99, 18.48 and 17.33 ×10-8 m2/s for N2-CH4, CO2-CH4, and CO2-N2 binary interaction respectively at the test condition. The dispersion coefficient increases with an increase in the injection rate due to rise in the interstitial velocity as the CO2 plume traverses through the core sample during the EGR process.