The vast untapped heavy oil resources in combined with global carbon capture and storage (CCS) open up alluring vistas for the world’s sustaining energy landscape. This has spurred much innovative technologies for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes, and Taichi Microfluidics is joining the on-chip CO2-EOR research in its early stage.
Unlike the conventional oil reservoirs under the solution gas drive, in many heavy oil reservoirs, the released gas bubbles remain dispersed in the highly viscous liquid oil during the early stages of pressure depletion. This pseudo-single phase flow regime, also termed as the foamy oil flow regime, is believed to be linked to anomalously high ultimate oil recovery, high oil production rates and low production gas-in-oil ratio (GOR) observed in the primary production stage.
To support research and industry investigation on foamy oil flow during the cold heavy oil production process, a chip-scale platform for structural characterization of foamy oil under reservoir conditions is developed with patents issued in 2022/06/29.
This high-pressure sapphire cell allows for in-situ quantification of bubble morphology, size distribution, foam quality, etc. under the reservoir conditions, which is relevant for studying Oswald ripening process, characterizing structure-property relations, etc. Other applications can be also achieved when integrated with optical and phase-field techniques.
High-pressure Sapphire Cell for Real-time Visualization of Foamy Oil Flow
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