Experimental Study of Solvent Injection to Heavy Oil in Homogeneous and Fractured Five-Spot Porous Media Using Glass Micromodel

In this work glass micromodel which is initially saturated with the heavy oil has been used to investigate the effect of fracture geometrical properties as well as different injection scenarios of hydrocarbon solvents such as Hexane, Decane and mixed solvent, in fractured and non-fractured quarter five-spot micromodels. The effect of different parameters such as solvent injection rate, solvent type, pore geometry, fracture orientation, fracture discontinuity, fracture spacing, fracture overlap and number of fracture, on oil recovery factor have been investigated. In addition, different injection schemes, water alternating solvent, co injection of water and solvent, and solvent-soak were designed and performed on glass micromodels. The results show that when the injection rate increased the oil recovery decreased. While, by increasing the viscosity of solvent the oil recovery factor increased. In addition, fro square pore shape the oil recovery is greater than the case that the pore shape is diamond. The oil recovery factor for the pattern with throat orientation angle of 30 degree is greater than the cases 90 and 45 degrees. The results confirmed that the oil recovery for the fracture orientation angle equal to 45 degree in greater than the fracture which is in direction of flow. Also, it has been observed that the discontinuity and overlap of fractures and increasing of fracture spacing, decreases the oil recovery. While the fractures distribution increases the oil recovery. The results confirmed that the ultimate oil recovery of WAS scheme is higher in comparison with the SWAS, and the efficiency of solvent-soak goes further both.