Experimental Investigation on Enhanced Oil Recovery of Extra Heavy Oil by Supercritical Water Flooding

Exploitation of deep extra heavy oil is a challenging work due to its high viscosity and high reservoir pressure. Supercritical water is first proposed as an injection agent, considering its favorable physiochemical properties. A novel flooding experimental system with a design temperature up to 450 °C and pressure up to 30 MPa was developed to demonstrate the feasibility of supercritical water flooding (SCWF) technology. A sand pack core with an adiabatic boundary was used to eliminate heat unbalance. The experimental results indicated that SCWF is a promising enhanced oil recovery technology. SCWF could significantly enhance oil recovery when compared with steam flooding and hot water flooding and reduce the oil viscosity simultaneously. SCWF at 25 MPa and 400 °C raised the recovery efficiency to 97.07% and reduced oil viscosity by 36.9%. The mechanism is attributed to the extraction heavy oil components into the water-rich phase by supercritical water and the formation of miscible flooding.