New insight on dynamic behavior of swelling and bond number of light and heavy crude oil during carbonated water flooding

Improving oil recovery and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions are two important attractive features of CO2-enriched water injection into oil reservoirs. Regarding these unique features, the main objective of this study was concentrated to evaluate the swelling behavior of crude oil as a fundamental mechanism of carbonated water (CW) flooding. To achieve these goals, the swelling and Bond number of light and heavy crude oils (namely LCO and HCO, respectively) are measured and compared to each other. The results obtained from the measured swelling factors of crude oil/CW show some complicated behaviors. That is, as temperature increases the swelling factor decreases at low pressure conditions, while at high pressure a reverse trend was observed. In addition, the crossover pressure, which can be contributed to the different swelling behaviors of crude oil for different CO2 contents of water, was shifted to higher pressure for the LCO compared to that for the HCO.