oil-danish-smartwater-24.html
Annual Report 201
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25 small revolution may have great consequences for
oil
recovery this year, the
smartwater
project
came to an end. since its birth in 2011, researchers have worked hard to make
oil
extraction more efficient. as philip loldrup fosbøl, associate professor at at cere, explains, even a small im- provement could mean a big difference: ?an
oil
reservoir basically consists of a big rock where the
oil
is embedded. only about 30% of this
oil
is extracted with current conventional methods. if we could recover just 1% more
oil
out of the reser- voirs, it would actually provide billions of dkk for the danish state.
smartwater
has been all about finding a way of doing this.? yet,
oil
recovery is by no means a simple discipline according to the associate professor. ?an
oil
reservoir is not a big ?pool? of
oil
somewhere under the sea floor, like many people intuitively think. it?s embedded in small holes and rooms in chalk like the kind you may remember from school. in the laboratory we use the exact same chalk combined with state-of-the-art technology to recreate the conditions under which
oil
is extracted?all of which happens under enormous pressure. ?is has enabled us to find out more about the effectiveness of
oil
extraction without having to actually go underwater and underground?. a small revolution in
oil
recovery and the prospects are looking good. ?e
project
has challenged one of the basic understandings of how to best utilize the
smartwater
concept. as philip loldrup fosbøl says: ?i like to think that, in the course of the
project
, we have revolutionized the way we think about
smartwater
technology. when injecting
smartwater
into the
oil
reservoir, small particles are formed as it mixes with the other fluids in the reser- voir. until now, scientists have believed this to be a problem, which it still is if there is too much of it and it clogs the res- ervoir, of course. but, what our research has also shown is that the particles are ac- tually part of the solution: ?e
oil
?sticks? to the particles and carry it to the produc- tion site. ?is way, we can get even more
oil
out,? says the associate professor who has been researching
oil
recovery at at cere for years, and believes we are now closer than ever to achieving the desired increase in
oil
production. industry is catching on ?e
project
has not been confined to dtu chemical engineering alone. dtu civil engineering has coordinated the
project
which was funded by maersk
oil
, dong energy and eudp. according to associate professor at at cere, kaj ?omsen who has been a main actor in the
project
, the collaboration has been of great importance and is expected to have influence on
oil
production in denmark and beyond. ?e new methods for
oil
extraction that are presented as a result of the
smartwater
project
have not yet been applied on a larger, industrial scale. however, this may be about to change: ?we have a lot of ideas from the
project
and the industry is very interested in them?this has a lot of potential. as it looks now, one of the funders of the
project
will most likely try to apply the methods in the future,? says associate professor, kaj ?omsen. at cere ?
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