SPE-174678-MS

Low-tension Gas Modeling in Surfactant Alternating Gas and Surfactant/Gas

Coinjection Processes
Mohammad R. Beygi, Abdoljalil Varavei, Mohammad Lotfollahi, Mojdeh Delshad, The University of Texas At Austin

Copyright 2015, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Enhanced Oil Recovery Conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 1113 August 2015.
This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
of the paper have not been reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any
position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its officers, or members. Electronic reproduction, distribution, or storage of any part of this paper without the written
consent of the Society of Petroleum Engineers is prohibited. Permission to reproduce in print is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words; illustrations may
not be copied. The abstract must contain conspicuous acknowledgment of SPE copyright.

Abstract
In this paper, we present a framework to model low-tension gas flood process and implement the model into the UT in-house
compositional gas reservoir simulator (UT-DOECO2). A gas compositional model is coupled with microemulsion phase
behavior to capture important mechanisms in hybrid gas-chemical flood processes in porous media.
Two different surfactant molecules are simultaneously applied: one to lower interfacial tension to ultra-low values and
one to keep foam stable as gas mobility control agent. This process cannot currently be modeled using the commercial reservoir
simulators. We implemented the option for two surfactants into the existing gas compositional simulator with foam and
hysteresis options. A predictive simulator would make it possible to select the best candidates for field application and tailor
process design to particular characteristics of each field.
In the field-scale application of the Surfactant Alternating Gas (SAG) process, multiphase fluid behavior in porous media
is modeled using three-phase compositional relative permeability and three-phase hysteresis models to include both
compositional and saturation history effects. These models represent a more-accurate prediction of the cycle-dependent
properties of SAG. The gas entrapment in the foam flow is used to predict the hysteresis effect within each cycle using a
dynamic Land coefficient. The in-situ foaming behavior is estimated based on the mechanistic foam models. This study, further,
evaluates mobilization and displacement of residual oil in tight reservoirs using the low-tension gas flood and compares the
results with other EOR options.
Using a reliable multiphase simulator low-tension gas experiments can be scaled up to the field and to optimize chemicalgas EOR process design. Numerical simulation of the SAG with and without hysteresis is used to assess the effect of the gasentrapment on oil recovery and gas utilization factor in a field-scale application.

Introduction
Low-tension-gas Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) method is a gas-chemical hybrid technique to increase oil production
and/or oil recovery efficiency. Gas flooding using hydrocarbon or non-hydrocarbon components, i.e. carbon dioxide, nitrogen,
flue gas, and enriched natural gas, helps to improve oil production and/or recovery due to elevated mass transfer between oil
and injected solvent. Surfactant flooding can recover trapped oil by reducing the interfacial tension between oil and water
phases. To increase solvent injection sweep efficiency, a wide range of gas-mobility-control techniques is introduced: wateralternate gas (WAG), simultaneous water and gas injection, polymer assisted WAG, gas viscosifying with polymer and foam.
The foaming surfactant agent could be dissolved in water or in gas. Recently, in-situ strong foam generation with surfactant
dissolved in CO2 were proposed. Gas can be injected along with an aqueous surfactant solution to create in-situ foam--lowtension gas flooding [Kamal and Mardsen (1973); Lawson and Reisberg (1980); Wang (2006); Srivastava et al. (2009); Li et
al. (2010), Szlendak et al. (2013); Farajzadeh et al (2013)].
Most fundamentally, wide applications of low-tension-gas flooding is limited due to associated risks: uncertainties in
reservoir characterization and heterogeneity and lack of understanding of the process and consequently lack of a predictive

SPE-174678-MS

reservoir simulator to mechanistically model the process. Moncorg et al. (2012) presented a framework aimed at integration
of new physics for improved recovery process with black-oil and equilibrium phase distribution ratio models. Trouillaud et al.
(2014) simulated the effect of pressure and oil composition on microemulsion phase behavior by coupling a gas/oil/water phase
behavior model with a microemulsion phase behavior model. Lotfollahi et al. (2015) developed a hybrid black-oil/surfactant
reservoir simulator to model chemical EOR processes with gas.
Foam can help to improve poor sweep efficiency due to reservoir heterogeneity, gravity override, and viscous instability.
The foam can be applied as a gas mobility and/or conformance control method. The gas mobility is controlled by foam texture
in the flowing part and the gas entrapment in porous medium. The increased gas trapping due to increased capillary-pressure
difference across the curved lamellae plays a crucial rule in gas mobility reduction. The experimental results show hysteretic
behavior in foam generation due to two general parameters: foam parameters and saturation direction. A coarse foam at
minimum required pressure-gradient jumps to a strong foam experiencing an irreversible process [Gauglitz et al. (2002); Shi
(1996)]. The mobility reduction factor exhibited a hysteresis behavior in a cycle of increasing/decreasing surfactant
concentration [Simjoo et al., (2013)]. The population balance models capture the abrupt jump in foam generation. The
saturation direction, also, affects the foam strength: the generated foam in increasing and decreasing gas saturation processes
are not identical. Gas trapping is a dynamic process even in microscopic scale in that the foam is trapped and remobilized
continuously in porous media. Nevertheless, the change of saturation direction impacts gas entrapment and must be explicitly
considered in the reservoir process modeling. An appropriate hysteresis model could assist in better modeling of foam behavior
in porous media. The foam applications involve alternative injection scheme in many places. The hysteresis model, thereby,
must capture cycle-dependent trapped saturation effect arising from the multicycle process.
Accurate multiphase relative permeability model is an indispensable part in numerical simulation of advance reservoir
processes: it must capture the fundamental phenomena of multiphase fluid flow in porous medium, e.g. saturation-path
dependency and compositional effects. Besides, it must be simple, and impose the minimum number of parameters to the
numerical simulation. Otherwise, it may not truly follow the multiphase process especially when saturation history changes or
mass transfer between the phases exists. On the other hand, it may cause numerical instability leading to convergence problem
in reservoir simulation. There are above thirty three-phase relative permeability models developed based on different
mathematical modeling while a few are industry approved models [Beygi et al. (2015) and references therein]. The existing
commercial reservoir simulators still lack a comprehensive three-phase flow model of coupled relative permeability and
capillary pressure including hysteresis and compositional effects. Predicting phase relative permeability at low saturation region
is another limitation of the commercially approved three-phase relative permeability models.
The objective of this paper is to present a new framework for the four-phase compositional/ chemical simulator to model
gas/chemical EOR processes including low-tension-gas flooding and foam. The four phases that may flow simultaneously are
(1) aqueous, (2) oil, (3) gas and (4) microemulsion phases. In this formulation, a hydrocarbon compositional model is coupled
with microemulsion phase behavior. Table 1 summarizes the component type and the phases in which each component is
allowed in this code. The following section describes the modeling of the hybrid chemical-gas process including robust threephase relative permeability and hysteresis models for better modeling of common situations faced in this cyclic process:
multiphase but low-saturation region, compositional effects due to mass transfer between the phases, phase appear/disappear,
and saturation-history dependency of relative permeability and capillary pressure.
Table 1: Component and phase allocation in UT-DOECO2

Phase
Water
Polymer
Component

Hydrocarbon
Non-condensable gases
Surfactant

Aqueous
X
X
X

Oleic

Gaseous

Microemulsion
X
X

X
X

X
X

X
X
X

SPE-174678-MS

Modeling
UT-DOECO2 overview
The in-house UT-DOECO2 reservoir simulator is an isothermal, three-dimensional, compositional gasflood simulator. The
solution scheme is IMPEC (implicit pressure/explicit concentration). It applies a three-phase hydrocarbon flash using PengRobinson EOS. The gridding options are Cartesian and unstructured/corner point type. A geomechanical package was coupled
with reservoir simulator. Figure 1 shows an overall flowchart of UT-DOECO2 simulator. The following sections briefly
overviews the modeling of relevant parts of the low-tension gas flooding surfactant in the UT-DOECO2 code.

Surfactant phase behavior

The microemulsion phase behavior is based on Winsor (1954) and Pope and Nelson (1978). The formulation of the binodal
curve using Hands rule (Hand, 1939) is assumed the same in all phase environments. Hands rule is based on the empirical
observation that equilibrium phase concentration ratios are straight lines on a log-log scale.
The binodal curve is computed from
3
2

= (3 ) , Eq. 1
1

where l denotes aqueous phase, the A and B are empirical parameters, volume of the ith component in the jth phase is divided by
volume of the jth phase. For a symmetric binodal curve where B = -1, which is the current formulation used in the code. Phase
concentrations are calculated explicitly in terms of oil concentration 2 (recalling 3=1 = 1). The microemulsion phase
is designated as phase one, which is the aqueous phase.
While, the microemulsion/excess-oil IFT decreases drastically as brine salinity increases, the microemulsion/excess-brine
IFT increases drastically as brine salinity increases. The salinity at the crossover point of these two IFTs is called the optimum
salinity. At the optimum salinity, the same amount of water and oil are dissolved in the microemulsion phase (surfactant rich
phase - in this code aqueous phase). For intermediate salinities less than or equal to the optimum salinity, parameter A in
binodal curve formulation is calculated as follow:
= (0 1 ) (1

) + 1

,.. Eq. 2

where CSE is the salt concentration in the aqueous phase and CSEOP is the optimum salinity. As=0,1 is the parameter related to the
height of the binodal curve (3, ) and is defines as,
= (

23,

123,

) , Eq. 3

where s=0, 1 represents the zero and optimum salinities, respectively.

In brine/oil/surfactant, the phase behavior is a function of C SE among other factors such as co-solvent concentration,
temperature, pressure, and solution gas. The microemulsion phase behavior is characterized as Type I (oil solubilized in
aqueous phase) when CSE is equal or less than the lower effective salinity (CSEL) where two phases are in equilibrium: the oleic
phase which is essentially pure and the microemulsion phase containing water, salt, surfactant, and the solubilized oil. This
phase behavior environment is called Type I as well because the tie lines have the negative slop on a conventional ternary
diagram. In Type I or Type II(+) environment phase (water solubilized in oil) the tie lines have a positive slop and CSE is equal
or greater than the upper effective salinity (C SEU). In this case also there are two phases in equilibrium: microemulsion and
excess aqueous phase. The microemulsion phase contains surfactant, oil and solubilized water and the aqueous phase which is
essentially pure. For intermediate salinity CSEL CSE CSEU, there are three phases in equilibrium depending on the component
composition, oleic, microemulsion, and aqueous phase. This environment is called Type III (middle phase in equilibrium with
excess oil and water phases) and it has a Type I and a Type II(+) lobe on a ternary diagram. The implementation is currently
considered for Type I surfactant phase behavior in the UT-DOECO2 code. The following two parameters are evaluated to
obtain surfactant-rich microemulsion phase composition:

31 = 3, Eq. 4
1

32 = ,... Eq. 5
31

where 1 and 3 are total volume concentration of water and surfactant, respectively. The microemulsion-phase concentrations
are calculated as follows:

SPE-174678-MS

32 (31 + 31 32 + 32 )1 = 1
3 = { 1 (1 + 31 )13
= 2 , Eq. 6
1 13 23
=3

Surfactant Retention
Surfactant loss due to adsorption and phase trapping is an important parameter in the chemical-EOR projects. A Langmuirtype isotherm is used to describe the surfactant adsorption onto solid mineral surfaces and phase trapping in pore throats. The
model takes into account the salinity and surfactant concentration with reversibility Options. The salinity for surfactant
adsorption is defined as a linear summation of monovalent cation and effective divalent cations.

Interfacial tension
Two models are implemented to calculate the interfacial tension between (IFT) microemulsion and oil phases: modified Healy
and Reed (1974) [Hirasaki, (1981)] and Huh (1979). The interfacial tension depends on solubilization parameter. In these
models, a constant oil-water interfacial tension is considered and in the absence of surfactant or in the case of low surfactant
concentration, i.e. below the Critical Micelle Concentration (CMC), the IFT reduces to water-oil IFT.

Microemulsion viscosity
Microemulsion viscosity is modeled in terms of pure component viscosities and the concentrations of oil, water, and surfactant
in the microemulsion phase:
1 = 11 1(21+31) + 21 2(11+31 ) + 31 3 (411+521) , Eq. 7
where Ci1 denotes the concentration of component i in the aqueous phase and the parameters are determined by matching
laboratory microemulsion viscosities at several compositions. In the absence of surfactant and polymer, water and oil phase
viscosities reduce to pure water and oil viscosities ( , ). When polymer is present, is replaced by .

Hydrocarbon dissolution
As surfactant concentrations higher than CMC the hydrocarbon solubility in the microemulsion phases. The mass transfer of
hydrocarbon components to the microemulsion phase is a function of the salinity, surfactant molecule, temperature etc.. Oil
dissolved in the aqueous phase can be either in equilibrium with the oil concentration in the oleic phase or with the limited
mass transfer. The equilibrium K-values, defined as the ratio of each component concentration in the aqueous phase to that in
the oleic phase are specified and sorted as a function of surfactant concentration. The kinetic mass-transfer rate can be further
added for the limited mass transfer option.

Surfactant mixing rule

Typically, a mixture of surfactants is used during the low-tension-gas flood: a low interfacial tension surfactant and a foaming
surfactant. The former reduces the IFT to ultra-low values and, thereby, the residual oil saturation is decreased. The latter
provides the essential gas mobility/conformance control. In reality, all the surfactants have both IFT and foaming to different
degrees and are rarely independent. Antn et al. (2008) discuss mixing rules to estimate microemulsion phase behavior when
more than one surfactant is present. The impact of mixing two surfactants also needs to be evaluated on foaming properties
[Andrianov et al. (2012)].
For the ideal mixture of two surfactants, a nonlinear mixing rule is applied to model the changes in optimal salinity as a
function of surfactants concentration [Salager et al., (1979a)].

= 1 1 +2 2 , Eq. 8

where
, 1 and 2 are the optimum salinities for the mixture of surfactants, surfactant 1 and surfactant 2,
respectively. 1 and 2 are mole fractions for surfactants 1 and 2. The optimum solubilization ratio follows a linear mixing
rule as [Mohammadi et al., (2009)]

= 1 1 +2 2 , , Eq. 9
where , 1 , and 2 are the optimum solubilization ratio of the mixture, surfactant 1, and surfactant 2, respectively.
We plan to implement the mixing rule for foaming surfactant and ultra-low IFT surfactant in the simulator in the near
future.

SPE-174678-MS

START

Read hydrocarbon and reservoir properties,

initial condition, and tracer concentration data
Constant phase-independent parameters in EOS, transmissibility,
well factor and component low-pressure viscosity
Reservoir initialization: hydrocarbon phase composition,
phase density, phase saturation, in-place water and hydrocarbons
Read time and well data

Compute/read time-step size

Fluid volume partial derivatives, potential difference, upstream
weighting, relative mobility and transmissibility
Physical dispersion
Solve pressure equation
Well flow rate and flowing BHP
Poroelasticity model (Update porosity)
Potential difference between grid blocks,
phase velocity, and overall composition
Simplified chemical flash
Select hydrocarbon
partition coefficient
Update aqueous and oil
phase compositions

Phase equilibrium calculation: phase stability analysis +

hydrocarbon flash calculation (excluding surfactant components)
(Compute overall composition and hydrocarbon phase composition)
Phase density (update aqueous phase density if surfactant exist), phase
saturation, fluid volume, and material balance (in-place, produced, injected)
Molar volume and phase viscosity

Update aqueous phase

density and viscosity
Y

ME exists?
(1 > )

Update IFT

Trapping number, hysteretic relative permeability and capillary pressure

Modify gas phase relative permeability

and back-calculate gas phase viscosity

Foam exists?
((2 > & < )
N

Material balance error

Figure 1: Summary flowchart of UT-DOECO2 code

GO TO 1

t<tfinal

END

SPE-174678-MS

Oil composition effect on microemulsion phase behavior

Key surfactant properties depend on crude oil composition [Salager et al. (1979a); Salager et al. (1979b); Baran et al. (1994)].
The crude oil composition effect is introduced by the equivalent alkane carbon number (EACN) concept. The surfactant phasebehavior parameters, e.g. optimum salinity, solubilization parameter, and width of Winsor Type III salinity, are estimated using
the following linear formulations,
= ( ), .... Eq. 10
= , + , , ... Eq. 11

= + ,.... Eq. 12

where , , , , , , , and are constants and dynamically calculated based upon a linear EACN-interpolation
scheme between the two experimentally matched sets of surfactant phase behavior parameters for the same surfactant but
having different EACNs. When the effect of EACN on the surfactant phase behavior is considered, in the Hands rule
formulation is evaluated as follows:
= 2 ,.... Eq. 13
In this study, the EACN of a given crude oil corresponds to the lipophilicity of the crude oil, i.e. the salinity at the transition
from Winsor Type I to II environment: the number of carbon atoms of an alkane exhibiting a hydrophobicity equivalent to the
crude oil. EACN for an oil mixture with provided components and composition is estimated using Cash et al. (1977) linear
mixture formulation,

= =1
,..... Eq. 14

where is the number of components in the mixture, is the mole fraction of component i and is the alkane carbon
number of the hydrocarbon component i.

Three-phase relative permeability

We use a general, robust, simple, compositionally consistent, three-phase relative permeability model [UTKR3P model, Beygi
et al. (2015)]. To calculate dynamically changing three-phase relative permeability model parameters, this model applies a
linear saturation-weighted interpolation scheme between measured two-phase relative parameters. Three-phase residual
saturation is a saturation-path-dependent parameter and is calculated using the saturation of the other phases and one parameter
per phase (b). The b parameter is the only parameter to adjust and depends on rock and fluid properties: rock wettability, phase
composition, pressure, and temperature. It is an input parameter calculated either based upon multiphase residual-saturation
lab measurement or gained from the history matching process. The UTKR3P model results in continuous and smooth relative
permeability and relative permeability derivative with respect to primary variables, i.e. phases saturation. The relative
permeability is inherently saturation-path dependent. Besides, it is applicable to mixed-wet rocks and captures the
compositional effects due to phase composition and/or capillary-desaturation at high trapping number region, i.e. low capillary,
high viscous, and high gravitational forces. This feature helps to better estimate the phase relative permeability in more complex
processes such as hybrid chemical-gas EOR where there is a considerable amount of mixing/mass transfer between the phases.

Three-phase hysteresis
A hysteresis model taking into consideration the phase trapping is an equally important feature of the gas-mobility-control
modeling. In foam applications, implementing the hysteresis model directly to the foam texture model is an accurate approach.
In this complicated approach, the foam behavior would be directly a function of saturation history and foam parameters, e.g.
foam quality and gas velocity. In a simpler approach, one can add the hysteresis model to a reliable multiphase-relativepermeability model to capture the impact of trapped saturation on the gas mobility reduction. We select the latter method
incorporating the saturation-history effect on hysteretic behavior of foam rheology.
Irreversibility in relative permeability plays a key role in multiphase flow modeling and in multicycle processes. Although
two-phase or reversible hysteresis models, e.g. Carlson model (1981), could distinguish between the primary increasing and
decreasing saturation processes, they cannot capture the change in relative permeability within the following cycles. The
physical phenomenon is important in more accurate reservoir modeling because could decrease the non-wetting phase (i.e. gas)
relative permeability up to five folds. It is especially important at low-saturation region that occurs in multicycle processes.

SPE-174678-MS

We implemented the irreversible UTHYST hysteresis model to the UT-DOECO2 code. This model is a general, simple,
fast, robust, three-phase hysteresis model. There are three main observations from the lab experimental results and field data
that incorporated into the UTHYST model: 1) monotonic increase in trapped-saturation in multicycle processes; 2) dynamic
Land coefficient behavior as cycle number increases; and 3) impact of a conjugate-phase saturation on phase entrapment within
each cycle [Beygi et al. (2015) and references therein]. The amount of phase trapping decreasing due to mass transfer between
phases is then added to the model for high trapping number conditions. The model adds one additional parameter for each
phase to include the level of relative permeability reduction due to the presence of a conjugate phase. We implemented the
UTHYST three-phase hysteresis model to the UTKR3P multiphase relative-permeability model and added to the simulator.

Foam
The implicit texture UT-foam model [Rossen et al., (1999)] and local-equilibrium population-balance foam model [Chen et al.,
(2010)] are incorporated in the simulator. The UT-foam model gives a steep increase in gas mobility as water saturation
decreases in the immediate vicinity of the limiting water saturation (Sw*) and a constant reduction in gas mobility for larger
value of water saturation. The model allows for non-Newtonian behavior in the low-quality regime: the mobility-reduction
factor is a power-law function of gas superficial velocity.
In Chen et al. (2010) foam model, lamella-generation rate is taken as a power-law expression, proportional to the
magnitude of the interstitial velocity of surfactant solution and 1/3 power of the interstitial gas velocity. The model employs a
capillary-pressure-dependent kinetic expression for lamella coalescence (to reflect the limiting capillary pressure) and a term
to represent the trapped fraction of foam. This model uses the shear-thinning expression of Hirasaki and Lawson (1985) for the
effective gas viscosity.
In presence of microemulsion phase, most of the surfactant remains in this phase. The results of pipette foaming test by
Srivastava (2010) showed Type I and Type III microemulsion phases form significant foam but foam does not form in Type II.
Foam in Type I is more stable compared to Type III due to lower salinity and lower amount of solubilized oil in the
microemulsion phase. Foam does not generate in excess aqueous phases from Type III and Type II due to surfactant partitioning
into microemulsion phase. As a result, when microemulsion phase is present the aqueous phase properties in each foam model,
i.e. aqueous phase saturation in the UT model and aqueous velocity and aqueous/gas capillary pressure in the Chen et al. model,
will be replaced with their corresponding values for the microemulsion phase [Naderi et al. (2013); Delshad et al. (2014)]

Simulation results and discussion

In this section, we discuss the simulation results for a synthetic, 2D reservoir to validate the low-tension gas flood model.
The reservoir is 30010100 ft discretized in 300 gird cells (30 1 10) and is a homogenous with one high-permeability
streak in the fourth top layer replicating the low-perm, intermediate-wet sample of Oak (1991). One quarter of a five-spot well
pattern is modeled: two wells, an injector and a producer, which are located at the opposite corners of the reservoir model.
Four-component oil composition is modeled with Peng-Robinson Equation-of-State. Table 2 and Table 3 list a summary of
reservoir and fluid properties. Phase numbering 1, 2, and 3 represents aqueous/microemulsion, oil, and gas phases. The model
represents a mature waterflooded reservoir with large resource of stranded oil: no initial mobile oil saturation. Two mechanisms
for oil recovery are lowering capillary trapping and increasing sweep efficiency. Two surfactants are used where one is
primarily reducing interfacial tension and another to mainly generate foam. Table 4 represents UT-foam model parameters,
surfactant properties, and oil composition effect based on two sets of experimental results versus EACN.
Simulation cases start with a low-tension surfactant slug of 1% (vol. frac.) to reduce water-oil interfacial tension and
mobilize the residual oil followed by four different injection schemes with or without hysteresis option as summarized in Table
5. Injection schemes include chase water, water-alternate-gas (WAG), foam surfactant-alternate-gas injection (SAG), and insitu foam generation with aqueous surfactant-gas co-injection (CoInj) plans. The injection salinity is 0.13 meq/mL. The WAG
scenarios are in multi cycles of 60 days of water injection followed by 60 days of N2 injection with WAG ratio 1:1. The
cumulative injection after 990 days is 5.0 PV. The injection well is rate controlled with switching option to bottomehole
pressure control of 3000 psi. The production well is pressure constrained with producing bottomehole pressure of 1500 psia.
For cases 2, 3, and 4, the cumulative water and gas injection are close to 36,500 STB and 14.5 MMSCF, respectively (5 PV
injection).
Table 2: 2D Base case fluid and reservoir properties
Initial pore volume= 8495.05 m3 (53.42 MSTB) and porosity=0.2
Horizontal permeability=0.0493 2 (50 md) and kv/kh=1.0 (except for high permeable streak)
=32.5 C (90F) and =10.34 MPa (1500 psia)
=0.65, =0.35, Initial salinity (meq/mL)=0.10

Initial oil composition: N2=0.0%; C10 =30%; C15=40%; C20=30%;

oil composition EACN: N2=0;
C10 =10;
C15=15; C20=20;
Formation compressibility =48.32 1/Pa (3 106 1/psi )

SPE-174678-MS

Table 3: 2D Base case relative permeability model parameters

0.20
0.35
31
= 32

12
= 13

21
0
12

0
13

23

0.35

0
31

0.12

0.25

0
32

0.90

0
21

0.70

0
23

0.70

112
= 112

2.00

131
= 132

2.50

121

123

2
, j,i=1,2,3

2.16

, j,i=1,2,3

1.0

, j,i=1,2,3
, j=1,2,3

0.0
0.0

2.70
0.0

1.0

, j,i=1,2,3
Gas hysteresis parameter (3 )

6.0

* 1, 2, and 3 represent water/microemulsion, oil, and gas phases, respectively

Table 4: Surfactants, microemulsion, and foam model parameters

=200;

=0.3;

UT-Foam model parameters

=0.001; =0.01; =1; , = 1(/)

=0.25;

Surfactant parameters
Surfactant compressibility (at P=14.65 psi) = 0.; CMC=0.001; Huhs IFT model parameter: 0.3
Compositional aqueous phase viscosity parameters: 1 = 1.5; 2 = 1.3; 3 = 3.0; 4 = 5 = 1.0

Oil composition effect on ME phase behavior (two set of parameters vs. EACN)
1st solubility experiment parameters:

2nd solubility experiment parameters:

No. of hydrocarbon components in the experiment=1

No. of hydrocarbon components in the experiment=1

EACN1=10

EACN2=20

,1 = 0.26, 0 =25, 1 =40, ( )1 = 0.2 ,2 = 0.30, 0 =8, 1 =18,( )2 = 0.30

Hydrocarbon dissolution vs. surfactant concentration

lbm surfactant
(
)
lbm water hydrocarbon solution

Component partition coefficient

N2

C10

C15

C20

0.1

0.0

0.0008

0.0008

0.0008

0.2

0.0

0.002

0.002

0.008

0.7

0.0

0.008

0.01148

0.01148

0.99

0.0

0.01148

0.01148

0.01148

Table 5: summary of simulation cases and oil recovery factor after 5 PV injection

Injection scheme
Surfactant
Drive
slug

Gas
hysteresis option

Oil RF
(%)

No

13.62

No

25.85

Carlson Model

27.28

2-C

UTHYST Model

28.93

3-A

No

30.29

Carlson Model

30.63

3-C

UTHYST Model

4-A

No

36.12
38.36

Carlson Model

38.55

UTHYST Model

38.69

Case
1

1% SI

Water

1% SI

Water-Alternate-Gas
(WAG)

2-A
2-B

3-B

4-B
4-C

1% SI

1% SI

0.1% SF-Alternate-Gas
(SAG)

0.1% SF-Gas Coinjection

(CoInj)

* SI: Low-tension surfactant , SF: Foaming surfactant

SPE-174678-MS

Figure 2 compares the oil recovery factor for the simulation cases. The foam mobility control methods results in higher oil
recovery factor-- incremental oil recovery by SAG and CoInj schemes over WAG strategy are 7.2% and 9.8%, respectively,
for the UTHYST three-phase hysteresis option. The generated foam mitigates the gas override to the high permeable zone/top
layers. It results both in improved gas vertical conformance at the injector well and in areal sweep efficiency. Although
coinjection plan is effective to increase oil recovery due to continuous in-situ foam generation, however it elevates the injection
flowing BHP and brings injectivity and consequently operational issues. Figure 2 reveals that impact of hysteresis option is not
unique and is process dependent. Figure 3 compares the injection well flowing BHP for water flood and three cases including
the UTHYST model. While flowing BHP fluctuates due to alternate fluid injection in WAG and SAG cases, it constantly boosts
for the coinjection scheme due to constant in-situ foam generation close to the wellbore area. Figure 4 compares oil distribution
for three aforementioned cases (including phase-3 UTHYST hysteresis option) at the end of injection plans. Figure 4 highlights
the high permeable area in red box. It reveals the foaming strategies potential to boost the areal sweep efficiency of the
mobilized oil through the low-tension process.
0.4

2-A

2-B

2-C

4-C

4-B

4-A

3-C

3-B

3-A

CoInj

SAG
0.3
Oil Recovery (fraction)

WAG

0.2

Water
0.1

0
0

200

100

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1K

Time (day)

Figure 2: Oil recovery vs. time for different processes listed in Table 5

3500

(Water)

2-C (WAG,

3 =6)

3-C (SAG,

3 =6)

4-C

(CoInj, 3 =6)

BHP (psi)

3000

2500

2000

1500
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

Time (day)

Figure 3: Injection well BHP vs. time for different multicycle processes compared to waterflood

1K

10

SPE-174678-MS

4a) Case
2-C

WAG

4b) Case
3-C

SAG

4c) Case
4-C

CoInj

Figure 4: Phase-2 (oil) saturation distribution for three cases at 5 PV injection (high permeable streak highlighted in red box)

As Figure 5 and Figure 6 imply, an important parameter for higher oil recovery for SAG and CoInj plans compared to that
of WAG scheme is the increased gas entrapment (compare cases 2-C and 3-C). These figures show the UTHYST model
potential to monitor the monotonically increasing gas trapping. The increased gas trapping is reflected by increased in-situ gas
saturation in the reservoir. As the only free parameter (3 ) of the UTHYST model increases (from 6 to 9), the gas trapping
within the current cycle decreases and approaches to the predicted values of the Carlson model. 3 denotes the impact of the
conjugate phase (water) saturation at the start of the current cycle on phase entrapment.
Figure 7 and Figure 8 depict the phase-3 (gas) relative permeability and phase trapping for a selected grid block (grib block
5,1,1 highlighted in purple box in Figure 4b) within 8-cycle WAG process. It shows the cycle-dependency of gas relative
permeability due to gas trapping. Note that the saturation path dependency incorporated in the UTKR3P three-phase relative
permeability model is not modeled since bj parameter value is set to zero. As a result, the cycle dependency is only because of
the saturation history effect imposed by the UTHYST model. The phase-3 relative permeability substantially decreases (40%)
as the cycle number increases. This simple concept can be applied to different relative permeability models by appropriate
definition of free and trapped saturation.

SPE-174678-MS

11

(gas) saturation
Average
Average phase-3
gas saturation

0.5

(SAG,No
NoHyst)
Hyst)
3-A (SAG,

(SAG,Carlson)
Carlson)
3-B (SAG,

(SAG,alpha,g=6
3 =6)
3-C (SAG,

(SAG,alpha,g=7
3 =7)
3-C (SAG,

3 =9)
3-C (SAG,
(SAG, alpha,g=9

(WAG,alpha,g=6
3 =6)
2-C (WAG,

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1K

Time (days)

Figure 5: Average phase-3 (gas) saturation in reservoir for different multicycle processes including UTHYST hysteresis model
(No Hyst)
(3 =7)

(Carlson)
(3 =9)

(3 =6)
(3 =12)

Figure 6: Impact of 2-phase Carlson and 3-phase UTHYST hysteresis model parameter (3 ) on oil recovery of multicycle SAG processes

12

SPE-174678-MS

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th

0.8

0.18

0.6

0.12

0.4

0.06

0.2

0
0

120

240

360

480
Time (day)

600

720

840

960

Figure 7: Phase-3 (gas) relative permeability (solid line) and normalized trapped saturation (dash line)
in 8-cycle WAG process (case 2-C), grid-block (5,1,1)

0.3

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th

0.25

Phase-3 (gas) relative permeability

Phase-3 (gas) relative permeability

0.24

Normalized phase-3 (gas)

trapped saturation

0.3

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

0
0.35

0.4

Phase-3 (gas) saturation

0.45

Figure 8: Phase-3 (gas) relative permeability in 8-cycle WAG process (case 2-C), grid-block (5,1,1)

0.5

SPE-174678-MS

13

Conclusions

A framework to model hybrid gas-chemical processes is proposed and implemented in the in-house gas flooding
compositional reservoir simulator. The framework captures the main mechanisms in low-tension gas flood and cyclic
injection schemes. This feature is not currently available in the commercial compositional reservoir simulators.

We conceptually validated the framework using a synthetic reservoir with experimental results for model parameters,
e.g. PVT, surfactant parameters, oil composition effect on surfactant phase behavior, foam model parameters,
multiphase relative permeability at low and high trapping numbers, and hysteresis.

The proper modeling of relative permeability and hysteresis in multicycle processes plays an indispensable role in
approaching toward more accurate reservoir simulation results. We, further, investigated the impact of hysteresis on
foam application where the effective phase trapping constantly changes.

Modeling multicycle processes in mixed-wet rocks requires the hysteresis option for more than one phase.
Nevertheless, we only applied hysteresis for the gas phase, where the phase trapping changes both with the saturation
history and foam generation. The increased number of fluid injection cycles results in more pronounced effect of
hysteresis on oil recovery, fluid injectivity, and field pressure response.

The multiphase UTHYST hysteresis model is a simple approach applicable to available relative permeability models
should the free phase saturation concept is correctly defined and implemented. The model parameter plays a crucial
role in modeling cyclic processes and must be evaluated based on experimental results or through the history matching
of experiments/field application.

Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the DOE-NETL under contract number DE-FE0005952.

Nomenclature

=0,1
=1,2,3

C1ji and C2ji

3,=0,1

k 0rji
31 , 32

Sjri

=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=
=

Empirical parameters in Hands rule bimodal curve formulation

Alkane carbon number
Parameter related to the height of the binodal curve
Parameter for relating three-phase to two-phase relative permeability
Surfactant-EACN phase behavior model parameter
Surfactant-EACN phase behavior model parameter
Empirical parameters in Hands rule bimodal curve formulation
Two-phase relative permeability curvature parameters for phase j flowing with phase i (UTKR3P model)
Height of binodal curve at zero (=0) and optimum salinity (=1)
Volume concentration of component i
Volume concentration of component i in phase l
Salt concentration in the aqueous phase
Lower effective salinity limit for Type III environment
Surfactant optimum salinity
Upper effective salinity limit for Type III environment

Threshold surfactant concentration (UT-foam model)

Equivalent alkane carbon number
Surfactant-EACN phase behavior model parameter
Two-phase end-point relative permeability for phase j flowing with phase i (UTKR3P model)
Surfactant phase behavior model parameter
Reference foam resistance factor at reference gas velocity (UT-foam model)
Surfactant-EACN phase behavior model parameter
Surfactant-EACN phase behavior model parameter
Surfactant-EACN phase behavior model parameter
Two-phase residual saturation for phase j with respect to phase i (UTKR3P model)

Maximum oil saturation for foam stability (UT-foam model)

Limiting water saturation (UT-foam model)

Reference gas Darcy velocity (UT-foam model)

Permeability reduction factor of phase-j due to the conjugate phase (UTHYST model)
Microemulsion viscosity parameters, i=1-5

14

SPE-174678-MS

=
=
=
=
=

Oil viscosity
Water viscosity
Solubilization ratio, s=0 (at zero salinity ),1 (at optimum salinity)
Shear-thinning exponent (UT-foam model)
Dimensionless parameter (UT-foam model)

Subscripts and superscripts:

*

=
=
=

Surfactant mixture property

High trapping number
Low trapping number

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