Numerical simulation of air–foam flooding in Wuliwan District 1 of Jing’an Oilfield

Abstract

Abstract Air–foam flooding is an important mean to reduce water cut, improve oil production rate, enhance oil displacement efficiency and oil recovery in old oilfield. Because of high cost of core displacement experiment, numerical simulation is an important method to get optimal injection-production parameters of air–foam flooding, which can improve displacement effect and direct field test in Wuliwan District 1 of Jing’an oilfield. Based on laboratory experiment of air–foam flooding, parameters including model component, low temperature oxidation reaction, physical/chemical phenomena, foam interpolation function were set, and then numerical simulation concept model of air–foam flooding was established, which realized accurate fitting for 1-D core flooding experiment. According to numerical simulation concept model of air–foam flooding, the injection-production parameters including injection volume, gas–liquid ratio, and injection time are optimized. Results indicated that optimum surfactant concentration was 0.5%, optimum injection volume of air–foam was 0.25PV, optimum gas–liquid ratio was 1.5:1, optimum injection time was 65% water cut when air–foam flooding began. The researches were applied in Wellbock ZJ53, Wuliwan District 1 of Jing’an Oilfield. There were 15 well groups with air–foam injection and 63 producers, with annual oil production rate scale of 50000 tons. The oil increase effect was very obvious and the application in Jing’an Oilfield was successful.

Keywords

• Air–foam flooding
• Numerical simulation
• Concept model
• Injection-production parameter optimization
• Field application