Application of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to Flow Simulations in Oil Reservoir Rocks

In the petroleum industry the implementation of new technologies for optimizing the efficiency of oil extraction is of primary importance. In general, oil production is divided into three main stages: primary, secondary (SOR), and tertiary or enhanced oil recovery (EOR). In particular, SOR involves the injection of water and gas to push the oil through the well and drive it to the surface, while EOR entails changing the properties of hydrocarbons through the injection of steam, chemicals (i.e., polymers), and gas (like, for example, natural gas, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide) in order to enhance the ability of trapped oil to flow through the reservoir. After primary and secondary recovery more than 70% of the oil remains trapped in the porous rock, while using EOR the efficiency of extraction can increase from 30 to 75%.1 An accurate determination of the physical characteristics of oil reservoirs is still beyond the reach at the moment, and so statistical tools together with complex laboratory experiments and field tests are used to extrapolate these properties. In order to reduce the model uncertainties, oil companies are addressing much effort to the research and development of new technologies. Among these, the use of numerical simulations has become a useful tool to complement traditional type experiments for a large number of phenomena occurring during oil extraction operations.2–6

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