Determination of gas dispersion in vapor extraction of heavy oil and bitumen

A Novel Technique to Determine Concentration-Dependent Solvent Dispersion in Vapex

“…Boustani and Maini [10] have shown a strong concentration dependence of dispersion, as observed in the case of molecular diffusion by Upreti and Mehrotra [11,12]. Kapadia et al [7] developed and simulated a mathematical model with a linear concentration-dependent dispersion to determine gas dispersion during the vapor extraction of Cold Lake bitumen from a rectangular block of homogeneous porous medium using butane. The dispersion coefficient was found to be four orders of magnitude higher than reported molecular diffusion.…”

“…Live oil mobility and its convection are also influenced by the action of gravity and surface renewal [3]. Investigators had to use dispersion coefficients that are up to four orders of magnitudes higher than the diffusion coefficients in order to predict the actual production rates [5][6][7][8]. Solvent dispersion is the reason for the high oil production rates in porous media.…”

The Integration of a Structural Water Gas Shift Catalyst with a Vanadium Alloy Hydrogen Transport Device

“…Thus, different "solvents" are produced with changes in pressure of the extraction. A higher pressure results in a denser CO 2 , and thus a heavier solvent. This produces a lower quality of the upgraded crude.…”

“…This indicates that there will be a tradeoff between the quality of the upgraded crude and the formation degradation that takes place due to the asphaltene precipitation. Kapadia et al (2006) [2] developed a model where butane, which is known to have a much higher miscibility with heavy oil than CO 2 is used as a dispersant. In reality, with CO 2 as the vapex gas, there is a 4 stage process whereby mixing takes place.…”

“…Many researchers (Butler and Mokrys, 1989), (Das andButler, 1996a, 1998b), (Butler and Jiang, 2000), (Boustani and Maini, 2001), (Nghiem et al, 2001), (Cuthiell et al, 2003), (Jha, 1986) have investigated the injection of semi-miscible solvents for enhanced recovery of heavy crude oils from laboratory scale to pilot plant and commercial scale [Turta and Singhal, 2004). Others have attempted to develop predictive models (Kapadia et al, 2006), (VafaieSefti and Mousavi-Dehghani, 2006), Cuthiell et al, 2003) to simulate the dynamics of solvents-heavy oil interactions in order to improve productivity. This paper analyzes various recovery techniques for heavy oil production and identifies limitations of present models to evaluate the efficacy of solvents (gases) injection in heavy oil reservoirs as an enhanced oil recovery method.…”