MICELLAR POLYMER PHYSICAL-PROPERTY MODELS FOR CONTAMINANT CLEANUP PROBLEMS AND ENHANCED OIL-RECOVERY/

Previous pseudo-phase representations of micellar/polymer phase behavi or have been highly successful in simulating enhanced oil recovery pro cesses using conventional numerical methods. These models allowed for a variety of physical phenomena, such as the formation of one to three phases, the effect of salinity and co-solvents on the phase behavior, adsorption of several of the chemical species, capillary desaturation , and polymer shear thinning and permeability reduction. In order to e xtend these models to either higher-order simulation techniques or to contaminant transport problems, it is necessary to remove previous dis continuities in the model behavior and to improve the predictions as c oncentrations become infinitesimal. In this paper, we provide a comple te description of a revised model that avoids the problems of the prev ious model, and we show how to implement the computations in a numeric ally stable fashion. Computational results from a North Sea pilot stud y are presented.