Experimental investigation of a novel method for heavy oil recovery using supercritical multithermal fluid flooding

Sun, Xiaofei; Cai, Jing; Li, Xiaoyü; Zheng, Wei; Wang, Taichao; Zhang, Yanyu

doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2020.116330

Cited by 35 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…The mean value of initial oil saturation is 0.8, while the average thickness of MacKay River oil sands is 20 m. The mean porosity and horizontal permeability of formation with sand stone are 0.34 and 2600 mD, respectively, while the anisotropy factor (ratio of vertical permeability to horizontal permeability) is 0.3. The formation compressibility is 2 × 10 −6 1/kPa, and the rock heat capacity is 2:39 × 10 6 J/ðm 3 •°CÞ. The thermal conductivity of rock, bitumen, water, and gas are 4:5 × 10 5 , 8:04 × 10 3 , 5:53 × 10 4 , and 2:07 × 10 3 J/ðm 3 •°CÞ, respectively.…”

Section: Prototype Reservoirmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The formation compressibility is 2 × 10 −6 1/kPa, and the rock heat capacity is 2:39 × 10 6 J/ðm 3 •°CÞ. The thermal conductivity of rock, bitumen, water, and gas are 4:5 × 10 5 , 8:04 × 10 3 , 5:53 × 10 4 , and 2:07 × 10 3 J/ðm 3 •°CÞ, respectively.…”

Section: Prototype Reservoirmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Oil sands or heavy oil reservoirs are considered to be the important part of unconventional resources [1][2][3]. And SAGD technology is widely used in the recovery process of aforementioned resources [4][5][6][7][8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Adverse Impact of Muddy Laminae on Conventional SAGD Performance and Improvement Strategy with the Multilateral Well Pattern

Liu

Bao

et al. 2021

Geofluids

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With further progress of Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) technology, a growing number of oil sands or heavy oil reservoirs were put into production in an efficient way. However, owing to the existence of muddy laminae within reservoirs, there are challenges associated with the expansion of the steam chamber and oil drainage during the SAGD process. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the adverse impact of muddy laminae on conventional SAGD performance and introduce an improvement strategy with multilateral well patterns to reduce the adverse impact and improve the performance. In the research reported here, the reservoir numerical simulation approach is applied to conduct the research. The analysis conducted on a prototypical reservoir reveals that the steam chamber may expand slowly in some sections due to the poor capacity of heat and mass transfer, and the expansion of the steam chamber is relatively uneven along the wellbore, when the muddy laminae are existing in the formation. The influence level of the muddy laminae on conventional SAGD performance under different distribution modes is different, but the adverse effect is mainly reflected in the delay of peak oil production, the decrease in peak oil production, the decrease in steam chamber volume, and the increase in the cumulative steam oil ratio (mainly in early and middle stages of the SAGD process). On the basis of aforementioned researches, the improvement strategy with two different multilateral well patterns, planar multilateral well and upward multilateral well, is introduced to improve the SAGD performance. The results indicate that the combination of a planar multilateral injector and planar multilateral producer has the best performance. By adopting such kind of combination, the recovery factor can be increased from 31.36% to 47.08%, and the cumulative steam oil ratio can be decreased from 5.29 m3/m3 to 4.64 m3/m3 under the combined distribution mode of muddy laminae. It can be known that the branches of the planar multilateral well are very helpful for the expansion of the steam chamber and oil drainage, once the heat connection between branches of the injector and producer is well established. Overall results show that the multilateral well pattern is promising for SAGD applications at oil sands or heavy oil reservoirs which are rich in muddy laminae.

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Section: Prototype Reservoirmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Prototype Reservoirmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Adverse Impact of Muddy Laminae on Conventional SAGD Performance and Improvement Strategy with the Multilateral Well Pattern

Liu

Bao

et al. 2021

Geofluids

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“…Recently, the supercritical multithermal fluids (SCMTF), which is composed of supercritical water (SCW), scN 2 , and scCO 2 , were produced by a newly designed generator to develop deep offshore heavy oil [7]. The generation of SCMTF is realized by the gasification of produced waste water and combustion of gasification product in SCW [8]. In contrast of steam, SCMTF has the following advantages: (1) the produced waste water is utilized as feedstock for SCMTF generation, which reduces the disposal cost of waste water, and the fuel cost for steam generation; (2) the SCMTF generator occupies small areas of land, which is more convenient than the large-scale steam generator considering the narrow space of offshore platforms; and (3) the temperature and dryness fraction of SCMTF is much higher than that of steam.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Supercritical Multithermal Fluid Flooding Investigation: Experiments and Numerical Simulation for Deep Offshore Heavy Oil Reservoirs

et al. 2021

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The supercritical multithermal fluids (SCMTF) were developed for deep offshore heavy oil reservoirs. However, its EOR mechanisms are still unclear, and its numerical simulation method is deficient. In this study, a series of sandpack flooding experiments were first performed to investigate the viability of SCMTF flooding. Then, a novel numerical model for SCMTF flooding was developed based on the experimental results to characterize the flooding processes and to study the effects of injection parameters on oil recovery on a lab scale. Finally, the performance of SCMTF flooding in a practical deep offshore oil field was evaluated through simulation. The experiment results show that the SCMTF flooding gave the highest oil recovery of 80.89%, which was 29.60% higher than that of the steam flooding and 11.09% higher than that of SCW flooding. The history matching process illustrated that the average errors of 3.24% in oil recovery and of 4.33% in pressure difference confirm that the developed numerical model can precisely simulate the dynamic of SCMTF flooding. Increases in temperature, pressure, and the mole ratio of scN2 and scCO2 mixture to SCW benefit the heavy oil production. However, too much increase in temperature resulted in formation damage. In addition, an excess of scN2 and scCO2 contributed to an early SCMTF breakthrough. The field-scale simulation indicated that compared to steam flooding, the SCMTF flooding increased cumulative oil production by 27122 m3 due to higher reservoir temperature, expanded heating area, and lower oil viscosity, suggesting that the SCMTF flooding is feasible in enhancing offshore heavy oil recovery.

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“…Recently, with the gradual depletion of onshore oil resources, the exploitation of offshore oil resources has attracted much attention [1]. Offshore heavy oil as an important part of offshore resources has played an increasingly important role in industry [2,3]. Heavy oil resources are abundant in the Bohai Bay of China, which has approximately 4 billion tons of heavy oil resources [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Simulations of Chemical-Assisted Steam Flooding in Offshore Heavy Oil Reservoirs after Water Flooding

et al. 2021

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Chemical-assisted steam flooding (CASF) is a promising method for heavy oils. However, few researches have investigated the CASF performance on offshore heavy oil reservoirs recovery after water flooding. In this study, a numerical simulation model was developed to simulate CASF processes for offshore heavy oil reservoirs after water flooding. Then, a comparison of CASF and various thermal methods was made to assess the feasibility of CASF in an offshore heavy reservoir of Bohai Bay, China. Finally, sensitivity analysis was performed to evaluate the effects of the gas-liquid ratio, foaming agent concentration, surfactant concentration, the size of nitrogen foam slug, the size of surfactant slug, and the number of chemical injection round on CASF performance by the developed model. The results showed that the developed numerical method can precisely simulate the CASF processes. CASF is a potential and effective method for offshore heavy oil reservoirs after water flooding. The most suitable gas-liquid ratio was around 2 : 1 under the simulation conditions. Considering the economic benefit, it is significant to optimize the CASF parameters, such as foaming agent concentration, the size of nitrogen foam slug, and the number of chemical injection round.

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Experimental investigation of a novel method for heavy oil recovery using supercritical multithermal fluid flooding

Cited by 35 publications

References 18 publications

The Adverse Impact of Muddy Laminae on Conventional SAGD Performance and Improvement Strategy with the Multilateral Well Pattern

The Adverse Impact of Muddy Laminae on Conventional SAGD Performance and Improvement Strategy with the Multilateral Well Pattern

The Supercritical Multithermal Fluid Flooding Investigation: Experiments and Numerical Simulation for Deep Offshore Heavy Oil Reservoirs

Numerical Simulations of Chemical-Assisted Steam Flooding in Offshore Heavy Oil Reservoirs after Water Flooding

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