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Monitoring Oil Displacement Processes with k‐t Accelerated Spin Echo SPI
Author(s) -
Li Ming,
Xiao Dan,
RomeroZerón Laura,
Balcom Bruce J.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.483
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1097-458X
pISSN - 0749-1581
DOI - 10.1002/mrc.4417
Subject(s) - chemistry , displacement (psychology) , porous medium , saturation (graph theory) , spin echo , nuclear magnetic resonance , magnetic resonance imaging , flooding (psychology) , enhanced oil recovery , porosity , analytical chemistry (journal) , petroleum engineering , chromatography , geology , physics , medicine , psychology , mathematics , organic chemistry , combinatorics , psychotherapist , radiology
Magnetic Resonance Imaging is a robust tool to monitor oil displacement processes in porous media. Conventional MRI measurement times can be lengthy which hinders monitoring time dependent displacements. Knowledge of the oil and water microscopic distribution is important because their pore scale behavior reflects the oil trapping mechanisms. The oil and water pore scale distribution is reflected in the magnetic resonance T 2 signal lifetime distribution. In this feature article, the authors employed a pure phase encoding MRI technique, Spin Echo SPI, to monitor oil displacement during water flooding and polymer flooding. A k ‐t acceleration method, with low rank matrix completion, was employed to improve the temporal resolution of the SE‐SPI MRI measurements. The authors demonstrate the k ‐t accelerated SE‐SPI MRI method improves measurement efficiency and SNR compared to conventional T 2 mapping SE‐SPI measurement. High‐quality 1D water saturation profiles were acquired from the k ‐t SE‐SPI measurements. Spatially and temporally resolved T 2 distributions were extracted from the profile data. The shift in the 1 H T 2 distribution of water in the pore space to longer lifetimes during water flooding and polymer flooding is consistent with increased water content in the pore space.