Petroleum Systems

Even in this era of transformation for climate protection and the energy system, the fossil fuels oil and natural gas remain an essential pillar of our society. To realise a fluent transition into a sustainable future, we still need to rely on those ressources for some time. Here, we need an optimal use of these declining resources. New technologies and methods can increase the expected useful life and might also lead to the reactivation of abandoned reserves.

The microfluidic technology developed and established at the Institute of Subsurface Energy Sytems, primary for Enhanced Oil Recovery, supports conventional core flooding. The additional visual access to fluid-fluid-interactions enables a deep insight into processes and mechanism in porous structures. These technology permitted new findings for the utilization of microbes in reservoirs and their influence on conformance control.

The core competence of the institute lies in the all-encompassing analysis of core samples and polymers. We have extensively equipped laboratories, microfluidic and core flooding rigs, as well as rheometers. Our rheology database includdes the data of various polymers and their properties at different experimental conditions.