Numerical simulation of pore-scale flow in chemical flooding process

Chemical flooding is one of the effective technologies to increase oil recovery of petroleum reservoirs after water flooding. Above the scale of representative elementary volume (REV), phenomenological modeling and numerical simulations of chemical flooding have been reported in literatures, but the studies alike are rarely conducted at the pore-scale, at which the effects of physicochemical hydrodynamics are hardly resolved either by experimental observations or by traditional continuum-based simulations. In this paper, dissipative particle dynamics (DPD), one of mesoscopic fluid particle methods, is introduced to simulate the pore-scale flow in chemical flooding processes. The theoretical background, mathematical formulation and numerical approach of DPD are presented. The plane Poiseuille flow is used to illustrate the accuracy of the DPD simulation, and then the processes of polymer flooding through an oil-wet throat and a water-wet throat are studies, respectively. The selected parameters of those simulations are given in details. These preliminary results show the potential of this novel method for modeling the physicochemical hydrodynamics at the pore scale in the area of chemical enhanced oil recovery. (C) 2011 The Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics.