We present work on a lattice gas model of oil, water and surfactant mixtures, with an application to enhanced oil extraction. Simulation of such complex systems in three dimensions requires a mesoscale simulation method implemented on massively parallel platforms. Implementation of computational steering in our parallel code enables us to interact with the simulation as if it was a virtual experiment, tuning parameters during execution and making more efficient use of our computational resources.
The work is sponsored by Schlumberger Cambridge Research, an oilfield services company interested in applications of complex fluid modelling for enhanced oil extraction.