MS 00
Program Overview
No files offered here
Surfactant CEOR Project
Chemical EOR Application in Abu Dhabi Carbonate Reservoirs
Four studies on chemical EOR in Abu Dhabi carbonate reservoirs, with two calculators. Each page states its own records and its own status.
Records differ by study: measured carbonate corefloods on study 01, SAMPLE inputs on studies 02 and 03, published literature on study 04.
4
Studies indexed
2
Calculators indexed
1
Manuscript offered here
1
Presentation offered here
01
Chemical EOR in HTHS Carbonates
Carbonate reservoirs hold a major share of conventional oil and dominate the mature provinces of the Middle East. Waterflooding leaves a large fraction of that oil behind: carbonate surfaces trend mixed-to-oil-wet, so capillary forces hold residual oil in films and small pores, and heterogeneity limits how much of the reservoir the injected water contacts. Chemical EOR targets the trapped fraction by changing the fluid–rock physics. Surfactants cut oil–water interfacial tension by orders of magnitude so that trapped oil can mobilise; polymers raise the viscosity of the injected water to improve sweep; both are injected as engineered slugs driven from injector to producer.
The setting studied here allows little margin: reservoir temperatures at and above 100 °C and formation brines beyond 150,000 ppm TDS with high hardness — conditions that destabilise conventional surfactants, raise retention on positively charged calcite, and narrow the workable formulation window. The four projects below share one program question: what does it take — measured trapping thresholds, stable formulations, retention below the economic gate, and honest evidence on polymer elasticity — to make chemical flooding work in Abu Dhabi's carbonates. The investigators on this work are named in the cited publications; this site carries no roster.
Oil-bank front x/L 0.62 · breakthrough at 0.73 PV
Interfacial Tension Reduction and Wettability Alteration
Capillary pressure sets the grip: Pc = 2σ cos θ / r for a pore throat of radius r. In an oil-wet pore the contact angle θ, measured through the water phase, exceeds 90°; cos θ is negative, and Pc opposes water entry — the rock holds its oil. Surfactants attack both terms at once. They cut the interfacial tension σ by up to five orders of magnitude, and they alter wettability, pulling θ back through 90°. Shrinking σ collapses the magnitude of Pc; crossing θ = 90° flips its sign, so the pore switches from repelling water to drawing it in, and the film-held oil releases from the surface. The same σ appears in the capillary number Nc = uμ/(φσ): lowering IFT raises Nc by the same orders of magnitude, carrying it past the mobilisation thresholds measured in this program.
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Trapping regime
Below Nt,crit
Nc 1.0 × 10−4 · released 0 / 18
Capillary pressure and capillary number — live
Oil-wet
u = 1 ft/day (Darcy) · φ = 0.22 · r = 1 μm
Capillary pressure, Pc
Pc = 2σ cos θ / r
−39.8 kPa
Negative — capillary force holds oil
Capillary number, Nc
2.79 × 10−7
Water-wet sandstone onset 1.9 × 10−5
Study 01, measured — carbonate Nt,crit range 8.47 × 10−4 – 2.23 × 10−3
Mobilisation range reached
How this was computed
Capillary pressure is evaluated as Pc = 2σ cos θ / r and the capillary number as Nc = uμ/(φσ), both in the browser from the three sliders above and the fixed conditions printed beside them: Darcy velocity 1 ft/day, porosity 0.220 as a fraction, pore-throat radius 1 μm. u is the Darcy velocity, not the interstitial velocity.
The three slider values are illustrative inputs. The reference line at 1.9 × 10−5 is the water-wet sandstone onset from the published literature. The carbonate band is measured, and its records are on the study 01 page.
02
Projects
Four studies and two calculators. Each row states what the page carries and what its manuscript status is; the page itself is the record.
Scroll across to inspect every column.
| No. | Study | Kind | Records | Status | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Critical Trapping Numbers and Capillary Desaturation | Interactive report | Measured carbonate coreflood records | Under review at Geoenergy Science and Engineering; preprint available on SSRN. The preprint has not been peer reviewed. | Open studycapillary-desaturation.adellabs.com |
| 02 | Retention-Controlled Screening of Chemical EOR | Screening tool | SAMPLE SAMPLE inputs | Manuscript prepared; pending review. Interactive materials and supporting files are not currently offered for public access. | Open studyretention-screening.adellabs.com |
| 03 | Techno-Economic Screening under Retention Uncertainty | Screening model | SAMPLE SAMPLE base case | Under review at Petroleum Research. The manuscript and its data workbook are not distributed from this page. | Open studyretention-economics.adellabs.com |
| 04 | Viscoelastic Polymer Flooding and Residual-Oil Desaturation | Literature synthesis | 49 elastic-versus-reference contrasts from 7 published studies | In preparation. Not distributed from this page. | Open studyviscoelastic-desaturation.adellabs.com |
| Live calculators | |||||
| T1 | Trapping Number and CDC Toolkit | Live tool | SAMPLE SAMPLE records | Trapping numbers from entered rate, viscosity, interfacial tension and permeability; a fitted desaturation curve; a petroleum unit converter. | Open calculatorcdc-calculator.adellabs.com |
| T2 | Chemical EOR Techno-Economics | Live tool | SAMPLE SAMPLE records | A flood design resolved into chemical demand, unit technical cost, net present value and breakeven retention. | Open calculatoreconomics-calculator.adellabs.com |
03
Manuscripts, Presentations and Data Packages
MS 01
Critical Trapping Numbers and Capillary Desaturation in Mixed-to-Oil-Wet Carbonates under High-Temperature, High-Salinity Surfactant Flooding
MS 02
A retention-controlled screening framework for chemical EOR in high-temperature, high-salinity carbonate reservoirs
No files offered here
MS 03
Techno-economic Screening of Surfactant Flooding in High-Temperature, High-Salinity Carbonates under Retention Uncertainty
No files offered here
MS 04
Viscoelastic Polymer Flooding and Residual-Oil Desaturation: A Criteria-Screened Evidence Synthesis, Carbonate Injectivity Bounds, and Experimental Design
No files offered here