Introduction

Heavy oils are those oils which have a low degree of API gravity (10-15), high
viscosity (1000-10000 cp) and density (965-1000 kg/m3).
Much of the heavy oil in Saskatchewan and Alberta is mobile under reservoir
conditions.
Oil recovery from these reservoirs, is estimated at 11%, compared to an
estimated ultimate recovery of 30 per cent from conventional reservoirs. This
makes heavy oil reservoirs especially attractive despite their low oil mobilities.
In most cases, the formation thickness is less (5ft).
So, thermal methods are less attractive in these type of reservoirs as they require
sufficient reservoir thickness.
Non-thermal recovery methods, such as chemical recovery processes and
immiscible carbon dioxide WAG (Water-Alternating-Gas) process can be
economically viable in such reservoirs, even though the recovery factor is low.
Principles of Oil Recovery
The two important concepts involved in oil recovery are Mobility Ratio, M, and the
Capillary Number, Nc.
Mobility ratio:
Mobility (k/) is defined as the ratio of effective permeability to the viscosity and
Mobility ratio M, is usually defined as the mobility ing of the displacing fluid
divided by the mobility ed of the displaced fluid.
If M >1, the displacing fluid will flow past much of the displaced fluid, displacing it
inefficiently which is unfavourable. It merely means that more fluid will have to
be injected to attain a given residual oil saturation.
For favorable condition M 1, (maximum displacement efficiency)
Thus, mobility ratio affects the displacement efficiency.
Mobility ratio can be made smaller by making the displacing fluid more viscous
which can be done by adding a suitable polymer to the displacing fluid.
Mobility ratio can also be made smaller by making the displaced fluid less viscous
which can be done by heating or adding a suitable solvent to the oil.
Neither approach is very practical.
Effective or relative permeabilities could also be modified, but the procedures are
complex and results uncertain.
Displacement efficiency, areal sweep efficiency as well as vertical sweep
efficiency decrease as the mobility ratio increases.
If the displacing fluid flows more readily than oil, the displacement is inefficient.
 Capillary Number
Nc, is defined as product of viscosity and velocity of displaced fluid divided by
the IFT between displaced and displacing fluid.
i.e. Nc = v/,
where is the displaced fluid viscosity, v is Darcy velocity, and is interfacial
tension (IFT) between the displaced and the displacing fluids.
The residual oil saturation is a function of the capillary number and are
inversely proportional to each other.
The capillary number can be increased by reducing oil viscosity, or increasing
pressure gradient, but more than anything, by decreasing the IFT.
IFTs would have to be lowered by a factor of about 1,000 to make a significant
gain in oil recovery.
Surfactants offer the more practical means of lowering the oil-water IFT.
However, surfactants can interact with the minerals and be adsorbed.
Heavy Oil Recovery Problems
Heavy oil has low mobility because of its high viscosity, even though the relative
permeability may be close to unity.
This results in the unfavourable mobility ratio in any fluid
displacement process.

Use of a chemical helps in two ways:

The oil-water IFT will decrease, resulting in a lower residual oil saturation.
The low IFT would promote the formation of an emulsion which, in turn, would
make the effective mobility ratio less unfavourable. The emulsion usually would
lower the mobility of the displacing fluid through drop entrainment and
entrapment.
Non-Thermal Chemical Methods for Heavy
Oil Recovery
Several methods comes under this category of heavy oil recovery. Few of
them are listed below:
Water flooding
Polymer flooding
Surfactant flooding
Wettability alteration
Alkaline flooding
CO2 flooding
Inert gas injection
Water flooding
It is the most commonly used non-thermal recovery method in case of heavy oil
reservoirs.
This method is economical and easy to apply.
In case of viscous oils, water flooding is variably inefficient because of the low
sweep efficiency.
Example: Drill an Injector, Drill an Updip Producer: showing a positive result of
water flooding technique.
Polymer Flooding
It involves the addition of a very small amount (in order of 250ppm) of a water-
soluble, high molecular weight polymer to the displacing water in order to
increase the apparent viscosity of water.
These polymers include polyethylene oxides, hydroxyethylcellulose,
polyacrylamides, saccharides.
These polymers can lead to an increase in water viscosity and also can decrease
the effective permeability of water, thus resulting in the decrease of mobility ratio.
Polymer flooding is effective in the reservoirs with oil viscosity in the range of 10-
150 cp.
This method was applied in the field with oil viscosity 220 cp and reservoir
permeability 8.4-12.8 Darcies, polymer slugs were injected followed by water,
recovery increased over a water flood range from 20-85%.
Surfactant Flooding
Surfactants are the chemical that lowers the surface tension or interfacial tension
between fluids or between a fluid and a solid.
Surfactant flooding involves the injection of surfactants which have the tendency
to reduce the IFT between oil and water.
Adsorption of surfactants on rock surface can be a problem, as a result of which
surfactant slug travels slower than the drive water.
The slug advance rate decreases as the concentration of the surfactant
decreases.
Hence, the amount of fluid need to be injected increases when the concentration
of surfactant decreases.
To decrease the residual oil saturation the IFT values should be decreased in the
order of 0.01dyne/cm.
In situ, formation of an emulsion also help in improving the effective mobility ratio.
The key factor is the amount of surfactant consumption per unit volume.
Wettability Alteration
In case of partially or totally oil wet rock, alteration of rock wettability to water wet,
leads to an increase in the oil recovery.
An acid slug is injected during the water flood, the recovery is greater (15%) if the
slug is injected early with water flood.
Injection at a high WOR may not have any significant benefits.
Injection of acid causes a drastic decrease in WOR, in case of acid flooding the
same recovery was obtained at much lower WOR.
Laboratory results showed that the recovery improvement was more in case of
more viscous oil.
Mungan et. al in June 1964 found that wettability reversal from oil-wet to water-
wet resulted in few percent additional oil recovery.
Alkaline Flooding
In this process, the intention is to form a surfactant in situ, as a result of reactions between
the injected alkali and the acid components of the crude oil.
This technique is used for moderately viscous fluid.
Johnson et. al in October 1975 studied about the four principal mechanism for caustic
flooding. These are
Emulsification and entrainment.
Wettability reversal from oil wet to water wet and vice-versa.
Emulsification and entrapment.
In case of viscous oils, the last mechanism will be the dominant mechanism.
The overall effect of these mechanism is the reduction in the mobility of water, which is
beneficial in improving volumetric sweep.
The factors responsible for the success of alkaline flooding are crude composition and
nature of the polar compounds present.
CO2 & Carbonated Waterflooding
CO2 has been employed in the oil recovery in two forms: miscible (carbon dioxide
flood and carbonated water flooding) and immiscible.
Immiscible carbon dioxide WAG flooding is a promising recovery method,
applicable to oil viscosities in the range of 500 to 5,000 mPa.s.
The pressure for CO2 flood (miscible) ranges from 1100 3000 psia, which makes
it impractical.
Carbonated water flooding is more promising in case of heavy oil.
Holm et. al in 1969, found that CO2 reduces oil viscosity and promotes swelling.
If a cheap supply of CO2 is readily available, carbonated water flood can be
successful in lowering the viscosity of moderately viscous oil.
Usually PV, a slug of carbonated water would be employed, followed by a
conventional water flood.
Inert Gas Injection
Two distinct application for the inert gas injection:
Inert gas was intended to be used as a drive gas.
Well stimulation.
The inert gas comprises of 11-13% of CO2 and 87-89% of Nitrogen.
The viscosity reduction will be quite small, which precludes the application of this
method to very heavy oils.
Problem associated
the problems of treating the engine exhaust
The corrosion of the well bore equipment
Up to 1976, 25 projects were involved with inert gas injection into heavy oil
formations and most of these were either failure or marginal success.
The process
Nitrogen is injected into a reservoir forms a miscible front by vaporizing
some of the lighter components from the oil.
This gas, now enriched to some extent, continues to move away from
the injection wells, contacting new oil and vaporizing more components,
enriching itself further.
This action continues, the leading edge of this gas front becomes so
enriched that it goes into solution becomes miscible, with the reservoir
oil.
Continued injection of nitrogen pushes the miscible front through the
reservoir moving bank of displaced oil towards production wells.
Water slugs are injected alternatively with the nitrogen to increase the
sweep efficiency and oil recovery.
Field Experience

Alikhan, and Farouq Ali

(1989) discussed the
results of 113 field tests
of non-thermal
methods applied for
heavy oil recovery.
These consisted of 15
caustic floods, 54
polymer floods, 25
carbon dioxide tests,
and 19 other floods.
Laboratory Experiment
The objective of the Senlac experiments was to determine oil recovery by
surfactant injection for a variety of initial conditions and flooding approaches,
including hot waterflooding.
The Edam experiments were designed to observe oil recovery behaviour for
surfactant huff npuff (cyclic injection-soak-production).
A predetermined volume of surfactant was injected into one end of the porous
medium, while capturing the fluids produced at the other end. After the designed
soak time (i.e., inlet and outlet shut-in), the produced fluid was injected back into
the sand pack, while producing from the injection end.

Properties of the porous media and the fluids used in the experiment
Experimental Results of Senlac Oil

Viscosity reduces with increase in temperature.

IFT reduces with increase in surfactant
concentration.
 Results from the experiment
show that hot water flooding
process at 50C was more
effective than cold water
flooding process.

When hot surfactant

was injected after (i) a
cold waterflood, and
(ii) after a hot
waterflood. The
respective oil
recoveries were 33.1%
and 10.2%
 A comparison with
previous curve shows that
the increase in oil
production occurred in the
later part of the flood.

It reflects the mixing of

surfactant-oil/water
interface.

In this case, cold

surfactant injection was
followed by hot surfactant
injection. The incremental
recovery increased to
21.2%.
Edam Oil Surfactant Huff nPuff Experiment
A predetermined surfactant volume was injected at one end of the sand pack.
Injection was then discontinued, and the sand pack was allowed to soak.
The fluid produced at the other end was re-injected at that end, with production
from the original injection end. This cycle was repeated, if desired.
The principal variables in this process were injection rate (kept constant at 8.23
m/day), surfactant concentration (1,000 and 2,000 ppm) and soak time (one to
seven days).
For a single cycle, the highest recovery obtained was 8.1% of the waterflood
residual oil. For two cycles it was 12.2%.
Limitations of Chemical
Methods
Chemical flooding methods have limitations of cost as well as reservoir
flow.
Cost of suitable surfactants can vary greatly, from $0.50 to 2.00 per lb.
($1.10 to $4.40 per kg), but the cost has been coming down over the
years.
Loss of surfactant as a result of adsorption and reaction with minerals are
of great concern.
Mixing of the surfactant with water, especially where the process is
initiated after a waterflood, can dilute it to a point where the surfactant is
not effective.
Environmental aspects of injection of chemicals and production of fluids
containing these chemicals can add to the cost.
Possible Improvements
Surfactant selection is very crucial and it should be selected based on its property
towards the rock surface, reservoir mineralogy and crude composition.
Before any field test, the surfactant loss to the rock should be determined carefully,
as a function of all relevant variables.
Laboratory results should be viewed with caution because they are usually unscaled,
and also because the effect of reservoir heterogeneity is absent in the experiments.
Quantitative prediction and description of thin reservoir
realizing the detailed correlation of thin net pay.
revealing the reservoir spatial distribution with three dimensional fine modeling.
proving resolution of seismic data.
Development pattern of horizontal well combination with different well types.
Conclusions
Laboratory results show that surfactant flooding can yield substantial oil
production above a waterflood.
Surfactant selection is a critical decision.
For Senlac crude oil
Starting at initial oil saturation, a cold surfactant flood is better than a cold
waterflood (46% vs. 35%).
Starting after a waterflood, a hot surfactant flood is better than a cold
surfactant flood (21% vs. 7% incremental).
Surfactant huff npuff, after a waterflood, can yield a few percent incremental oil:
the highest recovery was 8.1% and the lowest was 0.44% for one cycle.
The first cycle produces about twice as much oil as the second cycle.
Surfactant consumption is likely to be large, of the order of 10 lb/bbl (29 kg/m3).
References
https://www.onepetro.org/download/journal-paper/PETSOC-01-03-05?
id=journal-paper%2FPETSOC-01-03-05
http://glossary.oilfield.slb.com/
SELBY, R., ALIKHAN, A.A., and FAROUQ ALI, S.M., Potential of Non-Thermal Methods
for Heavy Oil Recovery; Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, pp. 45-59, July
August, 1989.
https://www.onepetro.org/download/conference-paper/SPE-172880-MS?id=conference-
paper%2FSPE-172880-MS
https://www.onepetro.org/download/conference-paper/SPE-5893-MS?id=conference-
paper%2FSPE-5893-MS
https://www.onepetro.org/download/conference-paper/IPTC-14582-MS?id=conference-
paper%2FIPTC-14582-MS
Holm, L. W,: Status of C02 and Hydrocarbon Miscible Oil Recovery Methods SPE 5560,
presented at the 50th Annual Fall Meeting of SPE, Dallas, Sept. 28-Ott.1, 1975.
 Johnson, Jr., Carl E.: Status of Caustic and Emulsion Methods, SPE
5561,presented at the 50th Annual Fall Meeting of SPE, Dallas, Sept. 28-Ott.1,
1975.
Lane, B. B.: A Progress Report of Polymer Flooding- Skull Creek South Unit,
Weston Cotity, Wyoming, SPE 3052, presented at the 45th Annual Fall Meeting
of SPE, Houston, Oct. 4-7, 1970.
Mungan, N.: Interracial Effects in Immiscible Liquid-Liquid Displacement in
Porous Media, SPE J. (Sept.,1966) 247-253.
Wagner, 0. R., and Leach, R. O.: Effect of Interfacial Tension on Displacement
Efficiency, SPE J. (Dec.,1966) 335-343.