Mature oil reservoirs surrounded with strong edge and bottom water drive aquifers experience pressure depletion and water coning/cresting. This laboratory research investigated the effects of bottom water drive and gas breakthrough on immiscible CO2-Assisted Gravity Drainage (CO2-AGD), focusing on substantial bottom water drive. The CO2-AGD method vertically separates the injected CO2 to formulate a gas cap and Oil. Visual experimental evaluation of CO2-AGD process performance was performed using a Hele-Shaw model. Water-wet sand was used for the experiments. The gas used for injection was pure CO2, and the “oleic” phase was n-decane with a negative spreading coefficient. The aqueous phase was deionized water. To evaluate the feasibility of the CO2-AGD process without any bottom water drives, it was first used. The experimental results demonstrated that existence of bottom water drive affected oil recoveries due to pressure support. Oil recovery before gas breakthrough increases proportionally with bottom water drive intensity. The gas breakthrough time recoveries for CO2-AGD1, CO2-AGD2, and CO2-AGD3 runs were 38.68%, 50.70%, and 60.85% of OOIP. The pressure gradient along the physical model decreases as bottom water drive intensity increases. The CO2-AGD approach delayed gas breakout by 72 min. As aquifer strength increases, gas breakthrough is delayed. In the three CO2-AGD runs and after breakthrough occurrence, the injector-producer pressure difference decreased due to the residual heads of oil and water columns above the horizontal well. As long as oil and water exist in the model, the pressure differential will not be zero, and the relative permeability and capillary trapping also control this phenomenon. Finally, it was demonstrated that there is a direct correlation between the strength of the aquifer and the oil recovery factor. The strength of the aquifer positively affects the oil recovery at breakthrough and the ultimate oil recovery.
