Research on Unconventional Resources Recovery
Natural gas is increasingly becoming the fuel of choice due to its cleaner burning properties. Gas resources from tight formations account for more than 3000 Tcf in the continental USA.1 This number could be even higher in other parts of the world considering increased exploration and advancements in technology.
Our research program offers the potential to advance recovery by developing a fundamental understanding of the exploration and production of these resources. Unconventional natural gas occurs mainly in formations such as shales, tight gas, coal-bed methane and gas hydrates.
Heavy oils are viscous hydrocarbons with dissolved natural gas with viscosities ranging from 100 cP to 1000s of cP. Primary recovery from heavy oil reservoirs is by depressurizing the reservoir to produce gas and liquids which is often called a solution gas drive. In the case of heavy foamy oil reservoirs, which is characterized by entrained gas bubbles, the depressurization leads to a production of entrained gas which does not form free gas phase immediately.
In a recent work we shoed that the the inflow performance in heavy oil wells is unlike that of conventional oils. Heavy foamy oils show an inflection of the inflow performance curve and thus leads to greater flow rates at lower drawdown. An important aspect of inflow performance is the rheology of the foamy oils. Rheology of foamy oils is not well understood as a function of the entrained gas and our current research is centered on the accurate understanding the rheological behavior of foamy oils. This can lead to more accurate viscosity and hence inflow performance models.
Alleviation of Greenhouse Gas Effects of Carbon-Di-Oxide by Sequestration
Another aspect of our research will focus on environmental aspects of petroleum engineering specifically carbon sequestration in geologic formations. CO2 is a major greenhouse gas that impacts climate of the earth. Sequestration is a way to isolate the greenhouse gas from atmosphere to prevent global warming. The proposed method includes capturing, injection and storage of CO2 in geologic formations.
Recent research has focused on the storage of CO2 in geologic formations after injection into deep saline aquifers. The aquifers are hypothesized to offer the greatest storage capacity for CO2 that needs to be eliminated from emissions. However, the storage in aquifers is critically dependent on several pore scale phenomena that can have major effects at large times scales. It will important to understand the pore scale and interfacial phenomena to extrapolate the predictions to time scales for storage which often range as much as 10000 years.
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