Experimental Study of Solvent Flooding to Heavy Oil in Fractured Five-Spot Micro-Models: The Role of Fracture Geometrical Characteristics

The solvent-based process appears to be an increasingly feasible technology for the extraction of heavy oil reserves. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding of how fracture geometrical characteristics control the oil recovery efficiency in this type of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique. In this work, a series of experiments were performed whereby the pure and mixed hydrocarbon solvents (HCS) displaced heavy oil in fractured five-spot glass micro-models. Successive images of the solvent injection process were recorded. The oil recovery factor, as a function of injected pore volume of solvents, was measured using image analysis of the provided pictures. It has been observed that the oil recovery decreased when the fractures' spacing, discontinuity, overlap, and distribution increased. In contrast, the oil recovery increased when the orientation angle, discontinuity-distribution and the number of fractures increased. Also, it has been found that there is an optimum solvent composition, which maximizes the oil recovery. Finally, some pore-level visualization representing the role of asphaltene precipitation during miscible injection was illustrated using these experiments. This study demonstrates the applicability of the micro-models for the fundamental studying of the solvent-based process in fractured five-spot systems, which are used to investigate the effect of fracture geometrical characteristics and their effect on oil recovery.