DME-based Enhanced Oil Recovery: From Theory to Practice

This book brings readers up to date with the current state of knowledge of the emerging technology of adding dimethyl ether (DME) to conventional enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. It explains the fundamental mechanisms and explores its applications, challenges, and future developments.

The authors give a technical insight into DME-based EOR and its fundamental characteristics and current research findings. Throughout the book, they furnish the reader with data that will allow them to replicate their own experiments and apply the findings to develop the field. They address topics including waterflooding, CO2 flooding in conventional and shale reservoirs, heavy oil recovery, and liquid/condensate removal. To date, DME-related research has been mainly conducted at the pilot or laboratory scale. This book therefore explains how simulation and injection design can be performed by adding DME properties to existing commercial software and offers suggestions for how the research can be taken from experimental to application stages. To facilitate this, the book also addresses questions of cost and how this can be reduced and the economic efficiency increased. This work aims to inspire new strategies using DME that can be applied in various types of reservoirs to enhance hydrocarbon recovery.

This book is a new and exciting resource for researchers in EOR who are looking to develop this field, overcome existing challenges, and explore the potential applications.

Kun Sang Lee is a professor at Hanyang University, South Korea, a distinguished professor at China University of Mining and Technology, China, and an honorary professor at Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia. He obtained his BS and MS degrees from Seoul National University in 1988 and 1990, respectively, and his PhD from The University of Texas at Austin in 1995.

Jiho Lee is a reservoir engineer with Korea National Oil Corporation. He obtained his PhD from Hanyang University in 2018.