Study on the blockage in pores due to asphaltene precipitation during different CO2 flooding schemes with NMR technique

CO₂ flooding is an effective way in the tertiary oil recovery. While asphaltene often precipitates from the crude oil during the CO₂ flooding, and the mechanisms of blockage resulting from asphaltene precipitation is still unclear in different CO₂ flooding schemes. In this work, pure-CO₂ flooding, water-alternating-CO₂ flooding (WAG), and CO₂-foam flooding were applied to conduct the core-flooding experiments. Then, as for each flooding scheme, we quantitatively investigated the blockage degree in different pores due to asphaltene precipitation with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technique. Tests results show that CO₂-foam flooding has a relatively higher blockage degree both in the smaller pores and the larger pores than WAG and pure-CO₂ flooding. Although pure-CO₂ flooding has the least asphaltene precipitation and blockage degree among three flooding schemes, its oil recovery degree is far less than the other two flooding schemes. Compared with pure-CO₂ flooding and CO₂-foam flooding, WAG flooding has the highest oil recovery and an acceptable asphaltene precipitation.