Sharif Digital Repository

Asphaltene instability is one of the major problems in gas injection projects throughout the world. Numerous models have been developed to predict asphaltene precipitation; The scaling equation is an attractive tool because of its simplicity and not involving complex properties of asphaltene. In this work, a new scaling model is presented to account for asphaltene precipitation due to gas injection at reservoir conditions. Extensive published data from literature have been used in model preparation. To check predictive capability of the equation, miscible gas injection experiments are conducted for a southwest Iranian oil reservoir. Experimental results show that methane injection has... 

Phase morphology, state of compatibility and various properties of blends of polycarbonate (PC) with bottle-grade and fibre-grade polyethylene terephthalate (BPET and FPET, respectively) were investigated. It was found that these blends have two-phase separated morphology with partial miscibility. Scanning electron micrographs revealed separated domains of PC-rich and PET-rich zones. PC domains appear spherical increasing in size from 2 μm for PC20/FPET80 up to about 5 μm for PC60/FPET40 blend. Further increase in PC content up to 80% caused phase inversion in which FPET appears as finely dispersed domains in continuous PC matrix. Tg of PC-rich phase decreased from 153 deg;C for pure PC down... 

The miscible displacement process appears to be an increasingly feasible method for the extraction of oil from depleted reservoirs. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding of how fracture geometrical characteristics impact the oil recovery efficiency in this type of enhanced oil recovery technique. In this work, a series of experimental tests were conducted whereby the n-Heptane as a solvent displaced n-Decane in the glass micro-models having different fracture geometries. It has been observed that the breakthrough time is decreased with increasing the fractures' length. In contrast, breakthrough time is increased when increasing the fractures orientation angle related to flow... 

The results of the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) determination for miscible injection of CO2 and an associated gas of one of Iranian gas reservoirs into two different oil samples using a slim tube device are presented. For an effective determination of the MMP cell-to-cell slim tube simulation was performed for each case before performing the slim tube experiment and the results were used to determine the pressure intervals in the slim tube experiment. A comparison between the measured MMP values from the slim tube experiments and those calculated by cell-to-cell simulation revealed that the cell-to-cell simulation can be a substitute to slim tube test in cases where time is a primary... 

This work concerns experimentally quantifying finger behavior during miscible displacements in fractured porous media. A series of miscible tests were performed on five-spot fractured micromodels which were initially saturated with heavy crude oil, and the developed finger patterns were quantified using an image analysis technique. The results revealed that the numbers of macro fingers formed is well correlated with the square root of dimensionless time, while the rate of finger initiation is independent of fracture characteristics. The level of bypassed oil linearly decreases with dimensionless distance traveled by front precisely. The transient fractal dimension behavior experiences a... 

Most of the reservoirs in Iran are heterogeneous fractured carbonate reservoirs. Heterogeneity causes an earlier breakthrough and an unstable front, which leads to a lower recovery. In this study, a series of experiments was conducted whereby the n-Heptane displaced n-Decane in glass micromodels having different fracture geometries. Experimental data from image analysis of miscible displacement processes are used to modify the fractional flow equations by a heterogeneity factor. It is shown that the heterogeneity factor in the modified equations can be expressed as a function of fracture length and orientation  

Many reservoir and production engineers face asphaltene precipitation as a major problem during miscible carbon dioxide flooding projects. Experimental studies regarding asphaltene precipitation are therefore employed to assist in selecting appropriate facilities and proper operation schemes. During this study, a series of high pressure, high temperature experiments are designed and performed to analyze asphaltene precipitation behavior of an Iranian light reservoir crude at reservoir conditions due to natural production and miscible CO2 gas injection. For both sets of experiments, two different temperature levels (including reservoir temperature) are selected to investigate the role of... 

Multiple contact miscible floods such as injection of relatively inexpensive gases into oil reservoirs are considered as well-established enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques for conventional reservoirs. A fundamental factor in the design of gas injection project is the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP), whereas local sweep efficiency from gas injection is very much dependent on the MMP. Slim tube displacements, and rising bubble apparatus (RBA) are two main tests that are used for experimentally determination of MMP but these tests are both costly and time consuming. Hence, searching for quick and accurate mathematical determination of gas-oil MMP is inevitable. The objective of this... 

In addition to reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emission, the high oil recovery efficiency achieved by CO2 injection processes makes CO2 injection a desirable enhance oil recovery (EOR) technique. Minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) is an important parameter in successful designation of any miscible gas injection process such as CO2 flooding; therefore, its accurate determination is of great importance. The current experimental techniques for determining MMP are expensive and time-consuming. In this study, multi-gene genetic programming has been combined with constrained multivariable search methods, and a simple empirical model has been developed which provides a reliable estimation of MMP in a... 

Most of numerical approaches describing the behavior of miscible displacement in porous media through the solution of advection-dispersion equation suffer from numerical dispersion. Random Walk (RW) method is a good candidate to overcome this problem especially in heterogeneous media. In addition, how treating dispersion coefficient as a tensor might affect the accuracy of RW simulation results is not well understood. Here, a RW model was developed and used for simulating miscible displacement experiments performed on heterogeneous micromodels including single fracture/flow barrier. Dispersion coefficient was treated as a tensor and a hybrid scheme was used for velocity interpolation. The... 

Nitrogen has been valued as an economical alternative injection gas for gas-based enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes. Minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) is the most important parameter to successfully design N2 flooding. In this communication, a data bank covering wide ranges of thermodynamic and compositional conditions was gathered from open literature. Afterward, a rigorous approach, namely least square support vector machine (LSSVM) optimized with coupled simulated annealing (CSA) was proposed to develop a reliable and robust model for the prediction of MMP of pure/impure N2–crude oil. The results of this study showed that the proposed model is more reliable and accurate than the... 

Reliable relative permeability curves of oil-gas systems are important for successful simulation and modeling of gas injection, especially when the miscibility condition approaches. In this work, the relative permeability of a CO2-light oil system has been measured under different conditions, using the Civan and Donaldson (1989) [13] method. Dolomite and sandstone core samples were used in the experiments. The minimum miscibility pressure was calculated using an empirical correlation, as well as slim-tube simulation. Due to some controversial assumptions of the Civan and Donaldson method, such as immiscible and incompressible displacement, history matching was used for predicting the...