Plasma Pulse Technology: An uprising EOR technique

Conventionally oil recovery factor is too low, which leaves great prospects for the application of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods to increase recovery factor. EOR methods are capital intensive and few are environmentally hazardous. So the paper discusses on the alternate enhanced oil recovery technique which has tremendous potential to curb the challenges of conventional EOR methods. Plasma pulse technology (PPT) aided EOR treatment is administered with an electric wireline conveyed plasma pulse generator tool that is run in the well and positioned alongside the perforations. Using energy stored in the generator's capacitors, a plasma arc is created that emits a tremendous amount of heat and pressure for a fraction of a second. This in turn creates a broad band of hydraulic impulse acoustic waves that are powerful enough to clean perforations and near wellbore damage. These waves continue to resonate deep into the reservoir, exciting the fluid molecules and increasing the reservoirs natural resonance to the degree that it can break larger hydrocarbon molecules to smaller one and simultaneously reducing adhesion tension which results in increased mobility of hydrocarbons. The plasma pulse technology has been successfully used on production as well as injection wells. It has been used often as a remedial procedure to increase well's productivity that has been on production for a period of time. This paper throws light on fundamentals of this advancing plasma pulse technology, contrasting it with recent EOR techniques. Effectiveness of treatment in increasing oil recovery, it's applicability to different reservoir types and results achieved so far are also covered in the paper.