Experimental Study on Effectiveness of Microwave Heating for Heavy Oil Imbibition Process

Electromagnetic heating become a preferred method of thermal stimulation in heavy oil reservoirs, mainly due to the ability for creating high-temperature rises in a relatively short time compared to other methods. To investigate the ability of method in oil production, in this paper, an experimental study on microwave heating for heavy oil imbibition process is presented. The imbibition test is carried out using microwave heating, in which effectiveness of the proposed method is to be compared with the conventional one. It shows that the oil recovery is observable easier by the conventional heating, however the heating speed is conducted faster using the proposed method. The microwave imbibition occurs in 5 minutes and produces 0.15 ml of oil, while the conventional imbibition takes up to 96 hours to obtain 0.3 ml of oil in brine. In addition, more oil recovery in the imbibition process is obtainable by the addition of nano-particles.