Investigation of Water-Flooding Activity Using Radiotracer Technology in Commercial Core-Flood Set Up

Abstract

An intervention of radiotracer technology in the EOR program has been initiated using commercial core-flood set up. A commercial type of Berea core is used throughout the experiment. ^99mTc is chosen as a radioactive tracer for this experiment, which has a half-life of 6 hours and emits gamma rays’ energy of 0.104MeV. It is a liquid radiotracer with the activity of 10GBq (270mCi), eluted and prepared by Institute Cancer of Malaysia (IKN) before transporting it to the laboratory at Centre of Research in Enhanced Oil Recovery (COREOR), Universiti Teknologi Petronas. The experiment was conducted after 3.5 half-lives. Thus the activity has reduced to approximately (1.48GBq) 40mCi during injection inside the system. The results can be used to assist the reservoir engineer in determining the exact water-tracer breakthrough, localize the location of water-tracer concerning time, and determine the residence time distribution and mean residence time of the core flood where the hydrodynamics of the flow can be predicted. Moreover, the introduction of radiotracer inside the core flood rig can be translated as secondary oil recovery. The idea is to integrate radiotracer technology into the existing commercial core flood set up (FES350) to track the movement of fluid during water-flooding operation. Besides, it can be considered as the first interaction of radiotracer in the enhanced oil recovery application studies in Malaysia.