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Adel Labs
CEOR program
CEOR program
Prepared by Imad A. Adel

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.

SAMPLE DATARecords differ by study: SAMPLE records on studies 01, 02 and 03, published literature on study 04.

Conceptual offshore scene · Programme scenery, not experimental evidence.

Explore the projects Manuscripts
4
Studies indexed
2
Calculators indexed
SAMPLE
Records — studies 01–03
Literature
Records — study 04

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 mobilize; 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 destabilize 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.

Chemical slug train in section, injector to producer A sectional strip of reservoir between an injector on the left and a producer on the right. Chase water drives a polymer bank, which pushes the surfactant slug; oil mobilized at the slug front coalesces into an oil bank ahead of it. The injected volume slider advances all four fronts, and the oil bank reaches the producer at 0.73 pore volumes.
0.45 PV

Oil-bank front x/L 0.62 · breakthrough at 0.73 PV

Chemical slug train in section — chase water drives the polymer bank, which pushes the surfactant slug; mobilized oil coalesces into a bank ahead of the slug and reaches the producer near 0.73 PV. Drag to advance injection.

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 = u·μ/(φ·σ): lowering IFT raises Nc by the same orders of magnitude, carrying it past the mobilization thresholds illustrated in this program.

Loading the three-dimensional scene

Drag to orbit

Trapping regime Below Nt,crit Nc 1.0 × 10−4 · released 0 / 18
1.0 × 10−4
SAMPLE DATATrapped oil on an oil-wet carbonate patch — droplets stay pinned below the critical trapping number; mobilization begins at Nt,crit = 5.86 × 10−4 (SAMPLE) and the remaining droplets release as Nc rises. Illustrative values; not the manuscript's measured onsets. Drag to orbit.

Capillary pressure and capillary number — live

23 mN/m
150°

Oil-wet

0.40 cP

u = 1 ft/day (Darcy) · φ = 0.22 · r = 1 µm

Capillary pressure, Pc

Pc = 2σ cos θ / r
Capillary pressure in a pore throat

−39.8 kPa

Negative — capillary force holds oil

Capillary number, Nc

2.79 × 10−7

Water-wet sandstone onset 1.9 × 10−5
SAMPLE DATACarbonate Nt,crit range 5.86 × 10−4 – 1.37 × 10−3

02

Projects

Reports

01

Coreflood program · Interactive reportSAMPLE DATA

Critical Trapping Numbers and Capillary Desaturation

A capillary desaturation and critical-trapping-number screening report for mixed-to-oil-wet carbonate cores under high-temperature, high-salinity surfactant flooding. The report runs on a SAMPLE record set that reaches the same screening conclusions as the manuscript with different values; the measured coreflood records are not published here.

Open report

capillary-desaturation.adellabs.com

02

Screening framework · Interactive companionSAMPLE DATA

Retention-Controlled Screening of Chemical EOR

A retention-controlled screening framework for surfactant EOR in HTHS carbonates: SAMPLE phase behavior, interfacial tension and wettability inputs, and a live retention-cost gate that prices retained surfactant against the screening budget.

Open report

retention-screening.adellabs.com

03

Screening economics · Interactive modelSAMPLE DATA

Techno-Economic Screening under Retention Uncertainty

A discounted-cash-flow screening model that resolves surfactant dynamic retention into project value — NPV, rate of return, unit technical cost, and breakeven retention — on a SAMPLE base case that reaches the same screening conclusions as the manuscript with different values.

Open report

retention-economics.adellabs.com

04

Evidence synthesis · Interactive companion

Viscoelastic Polymer Flooding and Residual-Oil Desaturation

A criteria-screened evidence synthesis of viscoelastic-polymer coreflood evidence for residual-oil desaturation, with measured carbonate injectivity bounds and a designed two-core experiment. The companion recomputes the classifier and estimator statistics live from the 49-contrast dataset.

Open report

viscoelastic-desaturation.adellabs.com

Live Calculators

Trapping Number and CDC Toolkit

The calculator computes capillary, Bond and total trapping numbers from entered rate, viscosity, interfacial tension and permeability, fits a capillary desaturation curve for the critical trapping number, and converts between petroleum unit systems.

Open calculator

cdc-calculator.adellabs.com

Chemical EOR Techno-Economics

The calculator resolves a user-defined flood design into chemical demand, unit technical cost, net present value and breakeven retention.

Open calculator

economics-calculator.adellabs.com

03

Manuscripts, Presentations and Data Packages

MS 00

Program Overview

Chemical EOR in Abu Dhabi carbonate reservoirs: the four studies read together as one chain of constraints, and where the margins sit.

MS 01

Critical Trapping Numbers and Capillary Desaturation in Mixed-to-Oil-Wet Carbonates under High-Temperature, High-Salinity Surfactant Flooding

Under review at Geoenergy Science and Engineering; preprint on SSRN (DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6901958, linked). The preprint has not been peer reviewed.

MS 02

A retention-controlled screening framework for chemical EOR in high-temperature, high-salinity carbonate reservoirs

Manuscript prepared; pending review. Interactive materials and supporting files are not currently offered for public access.

MS 03

Techno-economic Screening of Surfactant Flooding in High-Temperature, High-Salinity Carbonates under Retention Uncertainty

Under review at Petroleum Research. The manuscript and its data workbook are not distributed from this page.

MS 04

Viscoelastic Polymer Flooding and Residual-Oil Desaturation: A Criteria-Screened Evidence Synthesis, Carbonate Injectivity Bounds, and Experimental Design

In preparation; the page is a synthesis of published evidence.

Records differ by study: SAMPLE records on studies 01, 02 and 03, published literature on study 04.