Patent ID: 7912686
Filing Date: 2011-03-22
Classification: E21B

Abstract:
1. A method of optimizing recovery of a fluid in place in a heterogeneous porous medium, by injecting into the medium a sweeping fluid to cause flow of the fluid in place, the fluids being immiscible, wherein the medium is discretized into a grid of a set of cells, the method comprising: determining a velocity and a direction of flow for at least one of the fluids using a computer-based flow simulator to solve a pressure equation; defining a relation describing a position of a front separating the fluids, by accounting for velocity fluctuations in a frontal advance direction and velocity fluctuations in a direction perpendicular to the frontal advance direction; and for different time intervals, reconstructing a position of the front in the grid by a discretization of the relation and by a fast Fourier transform; and optimizing the injection of the sweeping fluid according to the position of the front; and wherein the relation comprises a first term representing a viscous coupling describing perturbations due to variation in saturation and a second term describing perturbations of the front caused by heterogeneities of the medium.