Comparative Predictive Behaviour of Two Numerical Techniques to Simulator Design of a Reservoir with Surfactant Mixture in Enhanced Oil Recovery Process

We consider here the application of orthogonal collocation and finite difference approximation to simulator design for a reservoir with surfactant mixture in enhanced oil recovery process to the solution of the applicable equations for the multidimensional, multicomponent and multiphase system. In this work, we report on the effect of significant reservoir parameters and the amount or nature of surfactant mixture on reservoir simulator design. Some of the novel aspects of this study stem from the actual formulation of the development of the simulator, in particular, the choice of dependent variables, and the treatment of boundary conditions. Numerical results obtained using orthogonal collocation and finite difference computations are used to control oscillatory overshoot. In both orthogonal collocation and finite difference method, general multi-dimensional schemes were applied in the flow simulations. Matlab computer programs were used for the numerical solution of the model equations. The results of the orthogonal collocation solution were compared with those of finite difference solutions. The results indicate that the concentration profiles of surfactants for orthogonal collocation showed more features than the predictions of the finite difference, offering more opportunities for further understanding of the physical nature of this complex problem. Also, comparison of the orthogonal collocation solution with computations based on finite difference method offers possible explanation for the observed differences especially between the methods and the two reservoirs. We found that the effect of surfactant in enhanced oil recovery process in surfactant flooding is in fact the dominant factor in reservoir simulator design.