Jyunsyung Tsau

University of Kansas | KU · TORP

Abstract: The growing energy demand and the need for climate mitigation strategies have spurred interest in the application of CO 2-enhanced oil recovery (CO 2-EOR) and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). Furthermore, natural hydrogen (H 2) production and underground hydrogen storage (UHS) in geological media have emerged as promising...

This paper introduces the groundbreaking application of a novel, low-corrosion, deep-penetrating, environmentally green acid designed for high-temperature Gulf reservoirs. The green acid exhibits various beneficial properties, including low corrosion rates with stainless steels and wireline materials, improved interfacial tension, and deeper penetr...

To achieve the net-zero emission goal of 2050, implementing carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technology has proven to be crucial. The CCUS processes integrate multidisciplinary domains such as chemical, subsurface engineering, economics, and environmental science. Therefore, the entire value chain must be examined to understand the v...

The technique of CO2-water alternating gas (WAG) for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and carbon storage has become a viable alternative method to reduce the atmospheric concentration of CO2, when compared with other utilization methods. However, CO2-EOR (utilization) and carbon sequestration processes involve modeling strongly complex mechanisms in sub...

The utilization of hydrocarbon gas in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes offers two significant advantages: an increase in the recovery factor and a reduction in net emissions. Through core-scale experimental and numerical investigations, effective diffusion coefficients for single-phase and cross-phase behavior were determined by Fu et al. (202...

The adsorption capacity of shale is commonly measured in the laboratory under low pressures. At low pressures, the excess adsorption capacity is approximately equal to the absolute adsorption capacity. Under high pressure, however, the excess adsorption is far less than the absolute adsorption capacity. The objective of this paper is to extend the...

Development of natural gas resources as fuel for energy transition requires sustainable recovery processes with manageable amount of water used for unconventional stimulation of wellbores to protect the environment. To manage stability issues and bubble morphological alternations within the waterless fluids such as dry foams, microstructure and phy...

The hydrocarbon gas huff and puff (HnP) technique has been used to improve oil production in unconventional oil reservoirs where excess capacity of produced gas is available and hydrocarbon prices are in a range to result in an economically viable case. Eagle Ford (EF) is one of the largest unconventional oil plays in the United State where HnP has...

Inaccessibility to direct pore scale observation in hydrocarbon recovery of tight shale formations poses a great challenge to water-energy nexus initiatives and necessitates the use of high throughput technologies to emulate environmentally friendly processes. Herein, we employ a precise glass micromodel fabrication and visualization method to isol...

Huff-n-puff (HnP) gas injection has proven to be effective for recovering more liquid hydrocarbons from shale oil reservoirs. However, effective simulation of HnP requires a better understanding of the complex microstructure of shales and the multi-scale pore systems. An integrated workflow is developed that identifies multicomponent grains and por...

Shale oil formations have a very low primary yield despite advances in multistage hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. In so doing, gas huff ‘n’ puff (HnP), among other improved oil recovery methods, is implemented to recover more liquid hydrocarbons. Gas HnP has proven to be an effective recovery process in shales taking into account the...

The energy sector is experiencing a historic boost in oil and natural gas production thanks to development of hydraulic fracturing for unconventional recovery from tight shale formations. However, the process suffers from large dependency on water resources with reported negative environmental impacts. Reduction of freshwater use in hydraulic fract...

Fracture complexity, variation in fluid properties, variations in rock types and diffusion of gas from the fracture into the oil-saturated nano-pores are the main contributing factors in oil recovery using gas huff-n-puff injection. Limited research has been conducted to define diffusion coefficients coupled with rock tortuosity resulting in calcul...

Simulation of gas huff-n-puff (HnP) in core models is often simplified by assuming homogenous, isotropic models, which are not representative of fine-grained multi-component shales with multiple types of pore space and anisotropic permeability. According to the previous literaturte, history matching of a 6-cycle HnP process and tuning of cross-phas...

For the substantial hydrocarbon potential and academic significance, focus of interest has been directed towards the microporous carbonate. Compared with the documented shallow burial microporous carbonate, carbonate with a depth deeper than 6000 m present, of course, different characteristics due to the long-term influences of the strong cementati...

Reservoir characteristics and genetic mechanisms of the deeply buried microporous limestones have been determined by integrating mercury injection capillary pressure measurements and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) observations on the Yingshan and Yijianfang formations in the Shunnan area, Tarim Basin. The studied intervals have low porosity (<2...

The approximate analytical solution, which is a shortened version of the complete analytical solution, serves as a fast approach of calculating low permeability using the measured parameters during the gas transient transmission in pulse-decay experiments. However, there are several practical issues that need to be clarified for better implementati...

The objective of this work is to conduct pore-scale analysis of the pore systems in an Eagle Ford (EF) outcrop sample and a Lower Eagle Ford (LEF) sample from a producing interval in the subsurface. After characterization, we estimate bulk transport properties (such as tortuosity and permeability) within each pore network model (PNM) using the latt...

There exits a great challenge to evaluate the flow properties of tight porous media even at the core scale. A pulse-decay experiment is routinely used to measure the petrophysical properties of tight cores including permeability and porosity. In this study, 5 sets of pulse-decay experiments are performed on a tight heterogeneous core by flowing nit...

Shale gas is a major component of natural-gas supply in the United States. Multistage-fractured horizontal wells significantly improve the production performance of ultralow-permeability shale-gas reservoirs. Researchers have believed that shale-gas-production simulations should take into account the complex-flow behaviors in both fractures and the...

Although CO2 foam flooding is a proven technology to improve oil recovery; it has been criticized for lack of long term stability in saline environment and in the presence of crude oil. To generate a more stable foam front in the presence of crude oil and to overcome the capillary forces destabilizing the foam lamella, polyelectrolyte complex nanop...

Molecular diffusion is an important EOR mechanism in naturally fractured reservoirs. However, the laboratory-measured diffusion coefficient in the fractured porous media is still limited; and grid sensitivity analysis is missing in the literature when the single-porosity system is applied to history match the pressure decline curve. We aimed to fil...

The amount of fresh water used in hydraulic fracturing can be significantly reduced by employing produced water compatible supercritical CO2 (scCO2) foams. Foams generated using surfactants only have suffered from long term stability issues resulting in low viscosity and proppant carrying problems. In this work foam lamella stabilization with polye...

It is well known within the industry that conventional drilling fluids can damage the well's producing zone. Damage mechanisms occur due to leakage of drilling fluid into the formation even after the formation of a filter cake. This filtrate contains entrained particulates that can enter the pore spaces of the rock and restrict flow through the por...

CO2 injection is a promising method to rejuvenate the shale oil reservoirs after the primary production. In this work, we comprehensively reviewed the CO2 injection enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and carbon storage related literature in shales over the past decade. The aspects reviewed include description of major shale reservoirs producing oil and th...

Molecular diffusion is an important EOR mechanism in naturally fractured reservoirs. However, the laboratory-measured diffusion coefficient in the fractured porous media is still limited; and grid sensitivity analysis is missing in the literature when the single-porosity system is applied to history match the pressure decline curve. We aimed to fil...

A deep insight into tight gas transient flow behavior is important for understanding the production behavior of tight gas reservoirs. In this work, we constructed a two-dimensional model to illustrate one methodology of evaluating effective permeability of fractured flow media. Pulse-decay experiments on one fractured core to study porosity and per...

Analyzing gas flow behavior is important for production prediction in heterogeneous fractured shale reservoirs, which is complex due to the presences of nanopores and high-degree heterogeneity in these complex flow network. First, we applied the discrete fracture model to simulate gas pulse-decay experiments in core plugs with different configurati...

Despite the increasing interest in CO 2 foam flooding for enhanced oil recovery applications, it is challenging to have a successful field operation as the performance of the surfactant is often affected by the presence of crude oil and salinity of the water. It is also challenging to dispose of huge amounts of water associated with the field opera...

To improve the stability of CO2 foam for mobility control using the most appropriate system of polyelectrolytes and polyelectrolyte complex nanoparticles in high salinity produced water: Improving the viscosity Stability in high salinity water containing divalent ions Stability in the presence of crude oil Better oil production (EOR) The main objec...

Gas flow behavior in the tight shale porous matrix is complex due to the involvement of multiple physical processes. Pore size reduces as the effective stress increases during the production process, which will reduce the intrinsic permeability of the porous media. Slip flow and pore diffusion enhance gas apparent permeability, especially under low...

Understanding carbon dioxide (CO2) storage capacity and flow behavior in shale reservoirs is important for the performance of both CO2-related improved oil recovery (IOR) and enhanced gas recovery (EGR) and of carbon sequestration. However, the literature lacks sufficient experimental data and a deep understanding of CO2 permeability and storage ca...

Although surfactant generated CO2 foam improves the mobility control for CO2 flooding, it suffers from instability in the presence of crude oil and in high salinity environments. The objective of this work is to improve the stability of the interface by lowering surfactant drainage and improving the stability of lamellae in high salinity produced w...

Polyelectrolyte complex nanoparticle (PECNP) systems compatible with produced water were developed to improve supercritical CO2 (scCO2) foam stability and to reduce fluid loss for fracturing applications. Foam viscosity, stability, fluid loss properties and cleanup of injected liquid through the formation were enhanced by PECNP-surfactant systems p...

Utilizing produced water for foam fracturing fluids as well as compatibility of supercritical CO2 with high salinity brine

Microcrack and heterogeneity are essential to tight oil and gas production, but there exits great uncertainty and challenge to evaluate them even at the core scale. Pulse-decay experiments are routinely used to measure petrophysical properties of tight cores. In this study, effects of permeability magnitude and location of the microcrack on pulse-d...

Flow mechanisms are complex in the tight shale porous matrix due to the multi-physics affecting fluid flow: the geomechanical effect, slip flow/diffusion and adsorption/desorption. The multi-physics make it difficult to obtain a deep understanding of flow mechanisms and production process of shale gas reservoirs. Ignoring any physics might lead to...

Molecular diffusion plays an important role in shale oil recovery. CO2 huff-n-puff is a feasible way to recover shale oil in multistage fractured horizontal wells, and natural fracture is important during this process. In this work, the CMG-GEM model is built based on the Bakken formation geological settings and the Bakken live oil PVT data, in whi...

Polyacrylamides are often used in water-based hydraulic fracturing for natural gas and oil production. However, residual polymer remaining in the fractured rock can limit production. A novel approach for degrading partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) was investigated using hydrogen peroxide and horseradish peroxidase (HRP). This sustainable H...

CO2 foam for enhanced oil-recovery applications has been traditionally used in order to address mobility-control problems that occur during CO2 flooding. However, the supercritical CO2 foam generated by surfactant has a few shortcomings, such as loss of surfactant to the formation due to adsorption and lack of a stable front in the presence of crud...

CO2 foam for enhanced oil recovery applications has been traditionally used in order to address mobility control problems occur during CO2 flooding. However, the supercritical CO2 foam generated by surfactant has a few shortcomings such as loss of surfactant to the formation due to adsorption, and lack of a stable front in the presence of crude oil...

A recent study showed that CO2 injection at pressures below minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) improves oil recovery with Arbuckle reservoir core samples at near miscible conditions. To demonstrate its applicability on a larger scale, a single well pilot test was designed to experimentally inject CO2 into the Arbuckle formation at pressures below M...

ExxonMobil (FC)2 Industry-Academic Alliance

A pilot carbon dioxide (CO2) -miscible flood was initiated in the Lansing-Kansas City C formation in the Hall-Gurney Field, Russell County, Kansas. The reservoir zone is an oomoldic limestone located at a depth of approximately 2,900 ft. The pilot consisted of one CO2 injection well and three production wells. Continuous CO2 injection began in Dece...

The value of m is critical in making estimates of water saturation. "Rule of thumb" values of cementation might lead to errors in water saturation on either the optimistic or the pessimistic side. In a mature field, developed during the 1950s, no porosity logs were available from sources other than the flushed zone resistivity Rxo. The microresisti...

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a proven enhanced oil recovery technology. However, many reservoirs are located at shallow depths or geologic conditions such that CO2 can not be injected at pressures above the MMP. CO2 injection is usually not considered as an enhanced oil recovery process in these reservoirs. When CO2 is injected below the MMP, displaceme...

Swelling/extraction tests are single-contact phase-behavior experiments to measure the solubility of CO2 dissolved in crude oil and the amount of hydrocarbon that CO2 can extract or vaporize from crude oil. The tests are commonly conducted in a visual PVT cell with a large sample size (40-100cc). In this paper, an easy operated apparatus capable of...

Typical oil fields in eastern Kansas area are shallow, low temperature reservoirs. Historically, waterflooding has commonly been applied as a secondary oil recovery method. In some cases, polymer flooding has been used to optimize the recovery of waterflooding. A polymer augmented waterflood was applied at the Manson lease, part of the West Savonbu...

This paper identifies chemical cost reduction derived from the synergistic effects of co-surfactant systems using a good foaming agent and a less expensive poor foaming agent. The required good foaming agent is reduced by at least 75%. Also the effect on injectivity is reduced by as much as 50% using the co-surfactant system, compared to a previous...

In a continuing effort to improve economics of oil recovery, the feasibility of using lignosulfonate with other surfactants for mobility control in CO2 flooding was evaluated. The laboratory tests were designed to quantify 1) the foam property of lignosulfonate with surfactant mixtures, and 2) the incremental oil recovery resulted from using such a...

The potential for using lignosulfonate as a sacrificial agent to reduce adsorption of the primary foaming agent in CO2 flooding was evaluated in laboratory experiments. Circulation and flow-through methods were used to measure adsorption to assess the loss of surfactants for economic evaluation and to design an optimum surfactant injection scheme....

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 1999 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition held in Houston, Texas, 3–6 October 1999.

The addition of surfactant in brine during a water alternating with CO2 (WAG) injection or co-injection with CO2 process has proven to produce foam that reduces CO2 mobility. Laboratory experiments have shown that some surfactants generate "smart" foam that selectively reduces mobility of CO2 by a greater fraction in lighter than in lower permeabil...

Some surfactants that we tested were found to be more capable of selectively reducing gas mobility by a greater fraction in high- permeability sands. It is expected that foam can mitigate the problem of an early gas breakthrough in EOR processes. Laboratory experiments were conducted to examine the effect of foam on two different systems of porous...

The potential for using mixed surfactants at low concentration to improve mobility control in CO flooding was evaluated in laboratory experiments. We examined various mixed surfactant systems, such as alpha olefin sulfonate and ethoxylated alcohol sulfate, through foam durability and flowing tests. In foam durability tests, we used a high pressure...

This work will examine three major areas in which COâ flooding can be improved: fluid and matrix interactions, conformance control/sweep efficiency, and reservoir simulation for improved oil recovery. The first full quarter of this project has been completed. We began examining synergistic affects of mixed surfactant versus single surfactant system...

Foam properties in porous media and in the bulk phase were evaluated for possible correlation by using two laboratory assessment methods. The foaming ability of surfactant with dense Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and durability of foam in the bulk phase were first tested in a device designed to select surfactants that might be suitable for the stabilization...

A grant, Improved Efficiency of Miscible CO2 Floods and Enhanced Prospects for CO2 Flooding Heterogeneous Reservoirs, DOE Contract No. DE-FG26-97BC15047, was awarded and started on June 1, 1997. This project examines three major areas in which CO2 flooding can be improved: fluid and matrix interactions, conformance control/sweep efficiency, and res...

Selective mobility reduction (SMR)-enhanced foam reduces mobility of CO2 by a greater fraction in high than in low permeability cores in the laboratory experiments.1–4 The occurrence of such an exciting property has been verified several times experimentally with isolated core samples ranging from less than one to more than 900 millidarcies. Howeve...

CO2-foam has been long realized as an effective mobility reducing agent for CO2 flooding in oil recovery process. Recent researches indicate that some CO2- foams also show an exciting additional characteristic, selective mobility reduction (SMR), in which the mobility of foam is reduced by a greater fraction in high than in low permeability cores i...

This paper presents the gelation results of a variety of organic fluids and supercritical carbon dioxide with 12-hydroxy stearic acid (HSA). At low concentration (0.75 wt%), HSA caused thermoreversible gelation of a variety of organic fluids such as aliphatic, alicyclic, aromatic hydrocarbon liquids, chlorinated fluids, and mixture such as Soltrol-...

This paper is a summary of both new and previous laboratory work done in support of the CO2-foam application in a pilot area of the East Vacuum Grayburg-San Andres Unit (EVGSAU) of southeastern New Mexico. This pilot test was a cooperative effort between the EVGSAU owners, New Mexico PRRC, and the Department of Energy. Different laboratory techniqu...