TY  - EJOU
AU  - Nwaigwe, Chinedu 
AU  - Atangana, Abdon 

TI  - Modeling Oil Production and Heat Distribution during Hot Water-Flooding in an Oil Reservoir
T2  - Fluid Dynamics \& Materials Processing

PY  - 2025
VL  - 21
IS  - 5
SN  - 1555-2578

AB  - In the early stages of oil exploration, oil is produced through processes such as well drilling. Later, hot water may be injected into the well to improve production. A key challenge is understanding how the temperature and velocity of the injected hot water affect the production rate. This is the focus of the current study. It proposes variable-viscosity mathematical models for heat and water saturation in a reservoir containing Bonny-light crude oil, with the aim of investigating the effects of water temperature and velocity on the recovery rate. First, two sets of experimental data are used to construct explicit temperature-dependent viscosity models for Bonny-light crude oil and water. These viscosity models are incorporated into the Buckley-Leverette equation for the dynamics of water saturation. A convex combination of the thermal conductivities of oil and water is used to formulate a heat propagation model. A finite volume scheme with temperature-dependent HLL numerical flux is proposed for saturation, while a finite difference approximation is derived for the heat model, both on a staggered grid. The convergence of the method is verified numerically. Simulations are conducted with different parameter values. The results show that at a wall temperature of 10°C, an increase in the injection velocity from  to  increases the production rate from  to . Meanwhile, with an injection velocity of , an increase in the temperature of the injected water from 25°C to 55°C increases production rate from  to . Therefore, it is concluded that an increase in either or both the temperature and velocity of the injected water leads to increased oil production, which is physically realistic. This indicates that the developed model is able to give useful insights into hot water flooding.
KW  - Oil recovery; injecting velocity; HLL finite volume method; Buckley-Leverette equation; fractional flow model; temperature-dependent viscosity models; water saturation

DO  - 10.32604/fdmp.2025.059925