Enhanced oil recovery

Surrogate rock pore structures

Today, oil recovery is still an important source of energy for the world economy, despite the exploration of alternative and environment-friendly sources. Looming shortages and awareness of possible collateral damage have led to intensive enhanced oil recovery studies to predict actual behavior.

Lab-on-a-chip technology makes it possible to study thermal, chemical and microbial enhanced oil recovery. By creating surrogate rock pore structures on a chip, it is possible to measure the effectiveness and possible side-effects of enhanced oil recovery. These surrogate structures provide a full visualisation of the flow and make real-time analysis possible. This way it is possible to characterise and predict the flow inside sedimentary rock structures.

Surrogate structures that rock

Therefore, Micronit has developed three types of Enhanced oil recovery chips together with leading industrial partners. These chips can be used for researching enhanced oil recovery, reservoir engineering and the environment. These chips can be found in our web store and contain either a uniform, random or a physical rock pore structure network, offering the following benefits:

Optically clear for flow visualisation.
Restrictive two-dimensional geometry, so called Hele Shaw Cells, for improved observation.
Controlled definition of rock pore structures through lithographic production techniques.
Pores, channels and the interconnection of varying dimensions accurately reproduced.

As an alternative to these standard structures we can offer you custom designs. Our creative product development service will gladly assist you in getting the design that matches the porous structures you require.

Fields and applications:

Enhanced oil recovery research
Reservoir engineering
Environmental research

Web store product

You can find the uniform, physical and random rock structure in our web store.

Create your own design

High reproducability

These chips are made by using litography methods that are precise and accurate. Which is ideal for reliable reproduction of your experiment.

Related cases

EOR chips

For research into enhanced oil recovery.

Visit our web store