Speaker
Description
Due to the inefficiency, high price, and environmental unsafety of the conventional recovery methods, the production decrease of the oil well is an increasingly serious problem all over the world. Therefore, the need for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques to recover a higher proportion of the oil has become imperative. The electrohydraulic shock waves with steep fronts and high intensity are utilized to generate micro-cracks near the oil well and enhance the permeability of the reservoir. A novel enhanced oil recovery technology based on repetitive electrohydraulic shock waves is presented in this paper. An observable enclosure with the ability of withstanding 50MPa hydrostatic pressure is developed to study the influence of hydrostatic pressure on the mechanism, controlling, and application of the repetitive electrohydraulic shock waves. The paper presents experimental results and optical observation for the characteristics and the development of the streamers under high hydrostatic pressure. The phenomena of the discharge as well as controlling of the electrohydraulic shock waves as a function of hydrostatic pressure are presented. In order to further evaluate the effect of fracturing the rocks and then enhancing the permeability, experiments are carried out on hollow cylinder specimens under different hydrostatic pressures. X-ray scans and microtomography have been used to analyze the dynamic response characteristic and the evolution of the micro-cracks of the specimens. These micro-cracks contributed to a great reduction of the difficulty and energy consumption in the oil recovery process. Results points out that design of prototype is dependent from the hydrostatic pressure and confirms the potential of this technology to be a promising EOR method in low permeability reservoir.
