CO2 Miscible Flooding for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Carbon capture aims to mitigate the emission of CO2 by capturing it at the point of combustion then storing it in geological reservoirs or applied through enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in a technology known as miscible flooding, so reduce CO2 atmospheric emissions. Miscible CO2-EOR employs supercritical CO2 to displace oil from a depleted oil reservoir. CO2 improve oil recovery by dissolving in, swelling, and reducing the oil viscosity. Hydrocarbon gases (natural gas and flue gas) used for miscible oil displacement in some large reservoirs. These displacements may simply amount to “pressure maintenance” in the reservoir. In such flooding techniques, the minimum miscibility pressure determined through multiple contact experiments and swelling test to determine the optimum injection conditions.