Production and evaluation of synthetic rocks for enhanced oil recovery studies.
synthetic rocks, petrophysical properties, uniaxial compressive strength, enhanced oil recovery.
Due to modern society dependence on petroleum derivatives, researches about its exploration and production have become extremely important. Since the natural rocks commonly used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) laboratorial trials are difficult to acquire and, also due to the fact that these rocks are usually anisotropic, the utilization of synthetic similar materials appear as an alternative to analysis and evaluation of EOR methods. Therefore, the present work aims to produce and evaluate synthetic rocks that may replace natural ones in EOR studies. To achieve that goal, rocks were created by mixing sand beach and ceramic, diatomaceous and kaolinite clays, using a 23 factorial experimental design and triplicate in the central point. During the making of the rocks, the binder concentration, compaction pressure and syntherization temperature were changed, in order to evaluate the petrophysical and mechanical characteristics of the synthetic rocks. The variance analysis (ANOVA) indicates that the porosity, permeability and uniaxial compressive strength models obtained are both predictive and significant, reaching determination coefficients of at least 0.95276. In addition, the petrophysical properties of the manufactured rocks presented similar values when compared to natural rocks commonly used in EOR studies, obtaining the best results with the ceramic clay, which contains a higher amount of funding minerals.