Flow Physics of Polymer Nanospheres and Diluted Microemulsion in Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs: An Investigation into Enhanced Oil Recovery Mechanisms

Summary Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in fractured carbonate reservoirs is challenging because of the heterogeneous and oil-wet nature. In this work, a new application of using polymer nanospheres (PNSs) and diluted microemulsion (DME) is presented to plug fractures and enhance water imbibition to recover oil from the tight, naturally fractured carbonate reservoirs. DME with different electric charges is compared through contact-angle and core-imbibition tests to evaluate their performances on EOR. The cationic DME is chosen because it has the fastest wettability-alteration rate and thus the highest oil recovery rate. Migration and plugging efficiency tests are conducted to identify the screened particle sizes of PNSs for the target reservoir cores. PNSs with a particle size of 300 nm are demonstrated to have the best performance of in-depth propagation before swelling and plugging after swelling within the naturally fractured cores are used in this study. Then coreflooding experiments are conducted to evaluate the EOR performance when PNSs and DME are used together, and results indicate that the oil recovery rate is increased by 24.3 and 44.1% compared to using PNSs or DME alone. In the end, a microfluidic experiment is carried out to reveal how DME works with PNSs.