Experimental and numerical investigations of waterflood profiles with different well configurations

Abstract

Experimental and numerical investigations of a waterflooding process with three different well configurations, vertical injection-vertical production (VI-VP), vertical injection-horizontal production (VI-HP), and horizontal injection-horizontal production (HI-HP), are studied here in a two-dimensional visualization cell with wells placed inside the porous medium. Water and oil profiles are tracked by mixing colored dyes that are soluble in only one phase. Experimental initial oil saturation distribution is supplied to the simulator using colored dye distribution by the Matlab image processing tool. The water flood profiles obtained by simulation using ECLIPSE are in reasonable agreement with experimental results. It is observed from experimental flood profiles that irreducible (connate) water distribution has an effect on the waterflood movement. It is seen that drawdown created by a vertical well is felt on the flood profile from the beginning of the waterflooding whereas this is not the case with the horizontal well. It is also observed that in case of the VI-VP configuration, the relative swept area is more.