A New Advancement in EOR: Plasma Pulse Technology

Objective: The objective of the paper is to propose a new technique in the domain of Enhanced Oil
Recovery (EOR): Plasma Pulse Technology. By the means of the paper, we also intend to discuss the
scientific aspect of the new technology and its advantages over the conventional EOR techniques.

The primary and secondary oil recovery methods are typically used for the production of crude. When
these methods have been fully implied and no more oil can be recovered from them, EOR (Enhanced Oil
Recovery) is used. The typical EOR methods utilized are gas injection, thermal injection, fire flooding,
chemical flooding and a lot more. However, these methods are hazardous to the environment as well as
highly costly. The objective of the paper is to present a new method for EOR. This new method is The
Plasma Pulse Technology (PPT). In this method, a plasma pulse generating instrument is run down the
well and is placed close to the perforations. Here, a plasma arc is generated using the energy stored in
the capacitors, thus generating a high amount of energy. This further leads to the production of highly
energetic acoustic waves. These waves penetrate into the reservoir, interfere with the fluid molecules
and this interference leads to the degradation of larger hydrocarbon chains or rings into smaller ones.
Via this method, the mobility of the fluid is increased by decreasing viscosity as well as adhesive and
cohesive forces, which leads to the increase in the recovery of the crude. The plasma pulse technology
has been successfully used in almost 200 wells around the world and has shown great results, hence
making it at par with other EOR techniques. It’s environment friendliness and no usage of chemicals or
gases gives it a special advantage. Hence, this paper discusses the technical and scientific aspects of the
plasma pulse technology, along with its advantages over the conventional EOR techniques.

KEYWORDS: Plasma Pulse Technology, EOR, technique, technology, energy, capacitors.