LAUSR

Carbonated water injection (CWI) is a modified CO2 flooding technique for enhanced oil recovery, which takes advantage of both CO2 flooding and water injection and has attracted much attention recently. However, the dedicated research so far has focused heavily on conventional reservoirs. The objective of this research is to investigate the performance of CWI in a tight oil reservoir. First, a set of well-designed multiple contact tests were conducted to simulate the dynamic mass transfer process of fresh carbonated water (CW) to live crude oil. In each test, CW was brought into contact with live crude oil in a high-temperature and high-pressure PVT cell. Pressure changes during the test were observed and recorded. After equilibrium, all the transferred CW was taken out of the cell and the swelled oil proceeded to the next contact. The volumes of water and liberated gas were measured. Then, the oil swelling factor could be calculated, which would verify the existence of the moving interface between CW and...