Characterization of oil-bearing sandstones for sustainable oil production in electrically enhanced oil recovery

Electrically assisted transport of hydrocarbons in geologically porous media has gained much attention both for environmental mitigation of contaminating oils and for recovery of reservoir oils over the last two decades. The basic concept of the method is to apply a direct current (DC) to activate electrokinetic (EK) phenomena near the solid-liquid interfaces inside the porous media. In electrically enhanced oil recovery (EEOR) applications, the phenomenon leads to oil transport under an applied electric field in the reservoir. The environmentally friendly aspects of the EEOR process make it a promising method for sustainable enhanced oil recovery applications. Mathematical modeling and reservoir simulation of EEOR require accurate estimation of constitutive relations including relative permeability curves. Viscous coupling between the two fluids due to momentum transfer across fluid-fluid interface has significant contribution to the oil production in EEOR and needs to be considered in development of relative permeability curves. In this paper, incorporation of viscous coupling for development of relative permeability curves for EEOR applications is investigated and the relative permeability curves for different oil bearing natural sandstone core specimens under applied electric field are developed.