Miscible displacements

Stalkup, F.l. Miscible Displacement Society of Petroleum Engineers Monograph, June 1983 Chapters 1,2,3... 

For a miscible displacement at the required reservoir conditions, carbon dioxide must exist as a dense fluid (in the range 0.5 to 0.8g/cc). Unfortunately, the viscosity of even dense CO2 is in the range of 0.03 to 0.08 cp, no more than one twentieth that of crude oil. When CO2 is used directly to displace the crude, the unfavorable viscosity ratio produces inefficient oil displacement by causing fingering of the CO2, due to frontal instability. In addition, the unfavorable mobility ratio accentuates flow non-... 

Stalkup Jr., F. I. Miscible Displacement Monograph Series 8, Society of Petroleum Engineers New York 1983. 

Brusseau, M.L., Jessup, R.E., and Rao, P.S.C. Sorption kinetics of organic chemicals evaluation of gas-purge and miscible-displacement techniques, Environ. Sci. Technol, 24(5) 727-735, 1990. 

Of specific interest here are the analyses by Cortis and Berkowitz (2004) of transport in partially saturated, laboratory columns. Three typical breakthrough curves from a series of miscible displacement experiments in partially saturated... 

Nielsen DR, Biggar JW (1962) Miscible displacement in soils. 111. Theoretical considerations. Soil Sci Soc Am Proc 26 216-221... 

B15. Blackwell, R. J., An investigation of miscible displacement processes in capillaries. Paper presented at local section A.I.Ch.E. Meeting, Galveston, Texas, October, 1957. 

A common use of three-component phase diagrams is in analysis of miscible displacement. For instance, Figure 2-30 gives the phase envelope of an oil mixed with carbon dioxide.6 The oil is plotted as an artificial two-component mixture, with methane as one component and all other constituents added together as the other component. 

Miscible fluid displacement (miscible displacement) is an oil displacement process in which an alcohol, a refined hydrocarbon, a condensed petroleum gas, carbon dioxide, liquefied natural gas, or even exhaust gas is injected into an oil reservoir, at pressure levels such that the injected gas or fluid and reservoir oil are miscible the process may include the concurrent, alternating, or subsequent injection of water. 

Miscible displacement or packed column techniques also are widely used (i.e., Brusseau et al., 1990 Lee et al., 1991). In this approach, the chemical of interest is pumped through a soil column and the concentration of the chemical in the column effluent is monitored over time. The resulting concentration versus time curve is subtracted from that of a conservative (non-sorbed) tracer, pumped through the column at the same time or in a different experiment, to calculate the extent of sorption. 

Carski, T.H., and D.L. Sparks. 1985. A modified miscible displacement technique for investigating adsorption-desorption kinetics in soils. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. /. 49 1114-1116. 

Lunn, S. R. D. Kueper, B. H. Risk Reduction during Chemical Flooding Preconditioning DNAPL Density In Situ Prior to Recovery by Miscible Displacement, Environ. Sci. Technol, 1999, 33, 1703-1708. 

Here one makes an effort to describe simultaneously transport-controlled and chemical kinetics processes (Skopp, 1986). Thus, an attempt is made to describe both the chemistry and physics accurately. For example, outflow curves from miscible displacement experiments on soil columns are matched to solutions of the conservation of mass equation. The matching process introduces a potential ambiquity such that experimental uncertainties are translated into model uncertainties. Often, an error in the description of the physical process is compensated for by an error in the chemical process and vice-versa (i.e., Nkedi-Kizza etal, 1984). 

Table 3.3 shows the effect of method on ka values. The type of method clearly affected the ka values and, although not shown, the time required for equilibrium in potassium adsorption to be reached. In earlier work, Ogwada and Sparks (1986a) had found that with the vortex batch method, diffusion was reduced significantly and the rate coefficients one obtained approximated reaction-controlled rate constants. The data in Table 3.3 show clearly that significant diffusion exists with the static and miscible displacement methods because of limited mixing. 

Hodges, S. C., and Johnson, G. (1987). Kinetics of sulfate adsorption and desorption by Cecil soil using miscible displacement. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 51, 323-331. 

Sparks, D. L., and Recheigl, J. E. (1982). Comparison of batch and miscible displacement techniques to describe potassium adsorption kinetics in Delaware soils. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 46, 875-877. 

Casey FXM, Ong SK, Horton R. Degradation and transformation of trichloroethylene in miscible displacement experiments through zerovalent metals. Environ Sci Technol 2000 34 5023-5029. 

When a solution containing a particular chemical species is displaced from a porous medium with the same solution but without the particular chemical species, this miscible displacement produces a chemical species distribution that is dependent on (1) microscope velocities, (2) chemical species diffusion rates, (3) physicochemical reactions of the chemical species with the porous medium, (e.g., soil), and (4) volume of water not readily displaced at saturation (this not-readily displaced water increases as desaturation increases (Nielsen and Biggar, 1961). 

Figure 10.6. Types of breakthrough curves for miscible displacement. C/C0 is the relative concentration of the chemical component measured in the effluent. Pore volume is the ratio of the volume of the effluent to the volume of solution in the column (from Nielsen and Biggar, 1962, with permission).

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