Flow visualization of waterflooding with horizontal and vertical wells

Abstract

This article presents an experimental and numerical study of the water-flooding process with different horizontal and vertical well configurations using flow visualization technique. The effect of horizontal wells on flood profile has been investigated by using two different well configurations, viz., horizontal injection-vertical production (HI-VP) and vertical injection-horizontal production (VI-HP). The experimental results show that HI-VP configuration recovers more oil than VI-HP configuration. The commercial simulator, ECLIPSE, is used for simulating the flood profiles for these well configurations. A good agreement is observed with the experimental flood profiles. Further simulations are carried out with varied perforation lengths and well positions to find out the optimal well configuration for both HI-VP and VI-HP. Such flow visualization experiments can be used as a validation tool for numerical simulators.