Suitability of hot urea solutions for wettability alteration of bitumen reservoirs - Simulation of laboratory flooding experiments

We report highly fine grid numerical simulation of sandpack flooding experiments conducted using 5 and 10 wt % hot urea solutions for wettability alteration of bitumen reservoirs. Another hot water flooding experiment was also simulated as a baseline for comparison with hot urea solutions. The relative permeability curves have been obtained through history matching of the experimental oil recovery. The results indicated that urea solutions have proved to be efficient in wettability alteration toward more water-wet and attenuation of viscous fingering leading to delayed water breakthrough as was confirmed by the shape of the relative permeability curves. Wettability alteration led to incremental oil recovery compared to the hot water flooding. It was shown that wettability alteration and the in-situ generation of water in oil (W/O) emulsions previously observed in experiments can be captured using the relative permeability curves. These results find application in the design and optimization of thermal bitumen recovery processes.