Enhancing Oil Recovery – How we think it works... – Basic MD Setup
Enhancing Oil Recovery – How we think it works... – Basic MD Setup
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Thermodynamics2015
My presentation for the Thermodynamics 2015 conference in Copenhagen.On Github thomasunderwood / Thermodynamics2015
Enhancing Oil Recovery
Using Free Energy Calculations to Help Explain Low-Salinity Enhanced Oil Recovery
Thomas Underwood
www.dur.ac.uk/thomas.underwood/
Global Energy Demand
By the year 2035 it is predicted that worldwide energy consumption will have increased by approximately 35%.
Current oil extraction methods only recover a third of the oil within a reservoir.
Optimizing oil extraction rates is a big problem!
A Possible Solution...
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is a technique used to enhance the oil output from a reservoir.
Using a flooding fluid with lower salinity (compared to sea-water) has been shown to improve oil extraction rates, hence low-salinity EOR.
How we think it works...
How we think it works...
How we think it works...
How we think it works...
How we think it works...
How we think it works...
A Brief Intro to Clays
Clays are layered minerals.
A single layer is about 1 nm.
They are negatively charge.
They have a large surface area.
They have some really cool properties...
...for example...
(http://www.minersoc.org/photo.php?id=149)
Research Questions
Low-salinity EOR works, but the fundamental mechanisms are not well understood.
- Can simulations help to improve our understanding of low-salinity EOR?
- Can the simulations help influence future experiments?
- Can our results help increase future oil extraction rates?
Molecular Dynamics 101
Atoms are treated classically (i.e. no quantum effects!).
Iteratively solve $F=ma$.
Metadynamics 101
Used to generate the free energy surface of some arbtirary reaction.
The Setup
Basic MD Result
(http://www.minersoc.org/photo.php?id=149)