NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF EMULSION FLOW-THROUGH POROUS-MEDIA

Flow of emulsion in porous media is of great interest to the oil indus try because emulsions play an important role in various enhanced oil r ecovery processes. Even though many laboratory, studies have been cond ucted to understand the rheology of and mechanisms of emulsion flow th rough porous media, relatively few efforts have been made towards the mathematical simulation of emulsion rheology and propagation in a poro us medium. Only a few researchers have attempted to simulate emulsion flow through porous, media, and most of them have considered the case for which emulsion is the only phase present in the system. Besides, m echanisms involved in selectively blocking high-permeability channels have not been incorporated. Also, phenomena of emulsion breaking and f ormation have been poorly defined by existing flow models. The formula tion developed in the present work explains the blocking mechanism of emulsion, incorporates emulsion breaking and formation, and relates em ulsion stability and permeability reduction to emulsion throughput and absolute permeability. The mathematical model is tested against exper imental results available in the literature, showing excellent agreeme nt.