CFD Study of Surfactant Flooding in a Micromodel with Quadratic Pore Shape

In the present study, simulation of surfactant flooding in a 2D micromodel was investigated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). To create the porous medium Gambit 2.3.16 was used and for solving the governing equations Fluent 6.3 was applied. The grid independency check was done and numerical results are grid independent. The surfactant solution were prepared with dispersion of Zyziphus spinachristi surfactant in distilled water, and the injected fluid was treated as a mixture of two phases. To study the multiphase flow behaviour of displacing fluid and the oil at the pore scale in the micromodel, governing equations were solved by the finite volume method. Simulation results were confirmed by the experimental data so that a good agreement between them was observed. The results of oil recovery factors during the surfactant flooding were compared with solvent flooding so that the numerical results show the surfactant injection improves the sweep efficiency that is resulted in conformance control of fingering and so the oil recovery factor increases