Multiphase Hydrocarbon Vacuum Enhanced Recovery (Bioslurping) and Transport

BIOSLURP is an areal finite-element model to simulate three-phase (water, oil and gas) flow and multicomponent transport in ground water in the unsaturated zone gas phase. BIOSLURP can be used to optimize the recovery of LNAPL, water, and gas by minimizing NAPL entrapment in the saturated/unsaturated zones, and simultaneously simulate multispecies aqueous and gas phase transport in unconfined aquifers. BIOSLURP can also simulate coupled flow of water and LNAPL with a static atmospheric gas phase. BIOSLURP simulates heterogeneous, anisotropic porous media or fractured media. BIOSLURP can be used to design NAPL recovery and hydraulic containment systems for the free phase hydrocarbon plume and dissolved phase plume under complex hydrogeological conditions. Bioslurping (vacuum enhanced recovery) increases gradients in water and oil potentials with minimal fluctuations in the fluid tables and thus helps to reduce volume of residual product and enhance free product recovery.