Study on Plugging the Multiscale Water Channeling in Low-Permeability Heterogeneous Porous Media Based on the Growth of Bacteria

Abstract

To promote the effect of waterflooding of a heterogeneous low-permeability reservoir in the Ordos Basin, a microbial plugging agent is developed to plug the multiscale water channeling. Based on the characteristics of the growth of bacteria, the microbial plugging agent can plug both porous media and microfractures with different scales. The microbial plugging agent is prepared by activating the native bacteria present in low-permeability reservoirs by using the fermentation nutrients. After growing in the fermentation nutrient solution for 4 days in a beaker, the growth of microbial strains begins to stabilize. After that, the main particle size of the prepared microbial plugging agent is between 40 μm and 160 μm and the median particle size (D50) is near 90 μm. The microbial plugging agent has good shear resistance, salt resistance, and stability. At the initial state, due to good injectivity, the microbial plugging agent can smoothly enter into a low-permeability core, a heterogeneous core, and a fractured core, respectively. Thus, it can grow and reproduce in the cores. Based on the characteristics of growth, it can match with the spatial scale of pore or fracture in the cores, so that it cannot only plug the porous media water channeling with different scales but also plug the microfracture water channeling with different scales. This phenomenon has been confirmed by microscopic visualization flow experiments and core flow experiments. The developed microbial plugging agent can be applied to plug the multiscale water channeling to enhance oil recovery of low-permeability heterogeneous reservoirs.