A simulation investigation of performance of polymer injection in hydraulically fractured heterogeneous reservoirs

Polymer flooding is a popular enhanced oil recovery method because of its impact on improvement of sweep efficiency. Polymers are non-Newtonian fluids with different behavior at different flow rates. At high shear rate, they reveal shear-thinning behavior, which is the apparent viscosity reduction by increasing shear rate. However, higher shear rate let them become dilatant. Consequently, an increase in shear rate contributes to increase in apparent viscosity and thus decreases the well injectivity of polymer. Hydraulic fracturing reduces mechanical shearing in the vicinity of the wellbore and plays an important role in feasibility of polymer flooding scenarios due to injectivity enhancement and lowering shear rate. A three-dimensional simulator was used to construct a synthetic model of the reservoir with no-flow boundary condition. Results show that induced hydraulic fractures improve recovery factor of homogeneous and heterogeneous reservoirs due to an increase in injectivity of polymer flooding, although in vertically heterogeneous reservoirs, induced fractures are not very effective. The results also show that the induced fractures are more successful in reservoirs with viscous oil. © 2016, The Author(s).