An Integrated Experimental and Numerical Approach To Assess the Performance of Solvent Injection Into Heavy Oil

Dauba, C.; Quettier, L.; Christensen, Jan H.; Goff, Caroline Le; Cordelier, Philippe

doi:10.2523/77459-ms

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…Moreover, it is worth mentioning that the viscosity reduction of the heavy oil occurs instantaneously if the concentration of the solvent is large enough at the production well. This phenomenon has been observed in previous work (7) . The amount of solvent required for this depends on the time it takes for it to be transported over the 5 m distance that separates the injection from the production well.…”

Section: -Month Injection Casesupporting

confidence: 60%

“…The API gravity of the oil was measured to be 12.27 °API. It has been shown (7) that, injecting a solvent into a moderately viscous oil is more effective in reducing viscosity than with a more viscous heavy oil. Therefore, 15 sm 3 of methane per standard cubic meter of oil was added to the dead oil prior to the PVT experiments.…”

Section: Characteristics Of the Oilmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Many simulations (5,6,7) , based on the laboratory scale, have been conducted to investigate asphaltenes precipitation and solvent dispersion phenomena by using STARS (8) . Most such simulations used porous media having permeabilities of 6 Darcy or greater.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Optimal Solvent and Well Geometry for Production of Heavy Oil by Cyclic Solvent Injection

Qi¹,

Polikar²

2005

Canadian International Petroleum Conference

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The Vapor Extraction (VAPEX) process has been proposed as a viable alternative to steam-based heavy oil recovery methods. In this process, a vaporized solvent is injected into a horizontal well placed higher in the formation, and the diluted heavy oil is produced by gravity drainage from a horizontal production well situated below. One shortcoming of this process is the slow diffusion of the solvent into the bulk of the oil.The mass transfer mechanism in the VAPEX process involves molecular diffusion and convective dispersion within a porous medium at a microscopic scale -phenomena that are not well understood. In this study, we are proposing an alternative method to VAPEX. Instead of directly injecting the vaporized solvent and producing oil, cyclic solvent soaking is applied to a heavy oil reservoir in order to maximize the mixing time between the solvent and the heavy oil.In this paper, the most effective solvent mixture, which must be in its gaseous phase and also close to its dew point pressure under the prevailing reservoir conditions, is determined using a swelling test, built in the Winprop (1) model. The solvent mixture is then verified by comparing different solvent compositions using thermodynamic simulations. The optimal soaking time for a certain amount of injected solvent is also examined by analyzing the effect of viscosity and the produced gas-oil ratio (GOR) on the performance of the process. Consequently, optimal values for the number of cycles of solvent injection, the soak time and the amount of back production based on the optimal soaking time, is determined.The influence of well geometry on oil recovery is also considered here. Properly positioning the horizontal injectors and producers can enhance significantly the overall oil production rate.

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Section: -Month Injection Casesupporting

confidence: 60%

Section: Characteristics Of the Oilmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Optimal Solvent and Well Geometry for Production of Heavy Oil by Cyclic Solvent Injection

Qi¹,

Polikar²

2005

Canadian International Petroleum Conference

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“…The diluted bitumen can drain down to the producer by gravity. Since the original paper, many valuable experimental studies were published using different systems, including Hele-Shaw cells (2)(3)(4) , pore network glass micromodels (5) , Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) (6) and PVT experiments (7) . In this paper, low field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) was used to measure the physical properties of heavy oil and bitumen samples with kerosene, hexane, naphtha, haptane, pentane, toluene in several ratios at room temperature and pressure.…”

Section: Canadian Institute Of Mining Metallurgy and Petroleummentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of Bitumen-Solvent Properties Using Low Field NMR

Yang¹,

Bryan²,

Kantzas³

2003

Canadian International Petroleum Conference

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The VAPEX (vapor extraction) process is a new technique for the recovery of highly viscous heavy oil and bitumen. This process involves injection of vaporized hydrocarbon solvent into heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs and production of the resulting solvent-diluted oil that drains by gravity in a horizontal well. Research has shown that this process is highly efficient and that different solvents give different results. In this paper, six different solvents were added to several oils of different viscosities and densities.The solvents were added in different ratios to each of the oils and NMR spectra were obtained. The mixture of solvent and heavy oil or bitumen produces a spectrum that is distinctly different than that of the solvent or oil alone. From the shape and amplitude of the NMR spectra we can calculate the amount of solvent prevent. Furthermore, we can predict the viscosity of the mixture without any additional viscosity measurements.As asphaltenes precipitate with the addition of solvent we can correlate the amount of asphaltene reduction to changes in the NMR spectra. In this manner, NMR can possibly be used to show the asphaltene precipitation of different oils in the presence of solvent. By measuring the amount of asphaltene precipitation, NMR can also provide an indication of in-situ upgrading of the oil that occurs with the addition of solvent. Using NMR as an analysis tool, the effect of the different solvents on viscosity reduction and asphaltene precipitation is quantified.

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“…CMG is a finite difference simulator that solves the mathematical models for flow, diffusion-convection, and continuity equations simultaneously. This simulator has been (2001), Cuthiell et al (1995), and Dauba et al (2002). Almost all properties of the simulation model were consistent with experimentally measured properties such as physical dimensions, porosity, permeability, temperature, initial pressure, and residual oil saturation.…”

Section: Simulation Modelmentioning

confidence: 55%

An Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Solvent Injection to Heavy Oil in Fractured Five-Spot Micromodels

Farzaneh

Ghazanfari

Kharrat

et al. 2010

Petroleum Science and Technology

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In this work a series of solvent injection experiments was conducted on horizontal glass micromodels at several fixed flow rate conditions. The micromodels were initially saturated with heavy crude oil. The produced oil as a function of injected volume of solvents was measured using image analysis of the continuously provided pictures. In order to investigate the macroscopic behavior of the process in different media, several fractured, with constant width, and nonfractured five-spot micromodels were designed and used. The measured data have also been used for verifying and developing a simulation model that was later used for sensitivity analysis of some parameters that affect oil recovery. The results show that when the fracture spacing increased, the oil recovery decreased. In contrast, as the fracture orientation angle (the angle with the mean flow direction) or solvent viscosity increased, the oil recovery increased. A critical value for the ratio of connate water saturation to the oil volume has been found that, beyond that the solvent injection process, loses its efficiency. The final recovery of a water alternating solvent (WAS) injection process in fractured medium in the presence/absence of connate water saturation was considerably greater than that obtained either by continuous solvent injection or water injection alone. Good agreement was observed between experimental and simulation results when a dual permeability model was used in our simulation.

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An Integrated Experimental and Numerical Approach To Assess the Performance of Solvent Injection Into Heavy Oil

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Optimal Solvent and Well Geometry for Production of Heavy Oil by Cyclic Solvent Injection

Optimal Solvent and Well Geometry for Production of Heavy Oil by Cyclic Solvent Injection

Evaluation of Bitumen-Solvent Properties Using Low Field NMR

An Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Solvent Injection to Heavy Oil in Fractured Five-Spot Micromodels

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