WSEAS Transactions on Heat and Mass Transfer
Print ISSN: 1790-5044, E-ISSN: 2224-3461
Volume 21, 2026
Modeling of Laboratory Experimental Tests Simulating Polymer Injection: Filtration Equations for the Black-Oil Model
Authors: , , ,
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Abstract: We modeled laboratory experiments simulating polymer injections in porous rocks using the black-oil model implemented in OPM Flow. This model accounts for oil, water, and gas phases and was extended to include polymer effects such as adsorption, permeability reduction, and changes in aqueous viscosity. We simulated three-dimensional models of Driza 1 and Driza 2 core samples, each containing 5,670 cells, under laboratory-matched conditions. Polymer injection nearly doubled oil recovery compared with waterflooding (53% and 52% vs. 25% and 25.8%), validating OPM Flow's ability to integrate experimental data with modeling to optimize enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in Albanian heavy oil reservoirs, such as Patos-Marinza. TPFA finite-volume discretization with automatic differentiation (AD) robustly solved the coupled systems (||R||<10-8). These results validate the EOR potential for Patos-Marinza heavy oil.
Keywords:
Polymer flooding, Black-oil model, Finite volume, Automatic differentiation, EOR, OPM Flow
Pages: 184-193
DOI: 10.37394/232012.2026.21.16