Mathematical and computational modeling of foam injection as an enhanced oil recovery technique applied to Brazil pre-salt reservoirs
International collaboration between UFJF (Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil), TU Delft (Delft University of Technology, Holland) and PUC-Rio (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) supported by Shell Brazil
The main objectives of this 4-year project are:
- Improve the understanding of physics and mathematics describing the foam displacement in porous media as an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique applied to Brazil pre-salt reservoirs.
- Develop analytic and numerical methods that can be used to test and validate commercial simulators.
The main deliverables of this project are:
- Formulation of simple models describing foam displacement, that can be investigated mathematically.
- Formulation and implementation of precise and robust numerical methods to simulate foam displacement in porous media.
- The detailed analysis of the solutions obtained mathematically and numerically allowing the validation of commercial simulators.
The project has a strongly multidisciplinary appeal bringing together the mathematical analysis and numerical simulations performed in UFJF, experimental investigation realized in PUC-Rio and physical modeling assisted by renowned experts in foam EOR from TU Delft.
FOSSIL – FOam diSplacement SImuLator
By Filipe F. de Paula, Thiago Quinelato and Iury Igreja.
- FOSSIL is our in-house developed simulator of the two-phase non-Newtonian flow of foam through heterogeneous porous media. Combining cutting-edge numerical methods with shared memory parallel computing, FOSSIL provides high-quality simulations of the flow of both compressible and incompressible fluids in a multitude of scenarios including gravity effects and preserving mass conservation. Its intuitive input format allows the user to choose between several mechanistic and population-balance based foam models, various relative permeability and capillary pressure relations, and flexible injection and control criteria.
