Study on Numerical Simulation for Component Transportation and Oil Displacement of a Microbial System

Component transportation is one of the main mechanisms for numerical simulation in microbial oil recovery. However, the research on the component transportation considering the inhibition of metabolites is very limited. A mathematical model of oil displacement in a microorganism system including microbial growth and metabolism equation, component transport equation, and porous media physical property variation equation was established in this paper. The equation was discretized and solved by implicit pressure and explicit saturation. The MATLAB simulation results showed that the chromatographic separation between microorganisms and nutrients happened because of the adsorption of porous media and the activity of microorganisms during the transportation, and the separation degree of the chromatography became higher as the permeability became lower and the injection speed became slower. The multislug alternative injection mode could reduce the degree of chromatographic separation, and the recovery rate can be increased to 50.82%. The results of this study could provide theoretical guidance for the popularization and application of microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR).