Sharif Digital Repository

Crude oil reservoirs have different temperatures, compositions, and pressures, therefore oil recovery performance by CO2 injection varies from one case to another. Furthermore, it is predicted that lower interfacial tension between injected CO2 and reservoir fluid results in more oil recovery. In this study, we investigate the effect of temperature on the equilibrium interfacial tension between CO2 and three different oil fluids at different pressures. Also minimum miscible pressure (MMP) is measured by the vanishing interfacial tension (VIT) technique to determine the temperature effect on the CO2 miscible gas injection. The results on different pure and mixtures of hydrocarbon fluids show... 

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... 

Asphaltene deposition has hindered oil production from asphaltenic oil reservoirs through deposition in reservoir rock and surface facilities. This paper investigates the effect of resin on asphaltene deposition at different pressures. To investigate the asphaltene deposition in the presence of resins at reservoir temperature and different pressures, a pressure, volume, and temperature (PVT) visual cell was designed. A high-resolution microscope and image processing software were used to detect and determine the amount of deposited asphaltene as well as its size distribution at different conditions. Two types of Iranian crude oils with different potential of deposition (low and high) were... 

The authors simulated a reservoir by using two-layer perceptron. Indeed a model was developed to simulate the increase in oil recovery caused by bacteria injection into an oil reservoir. This model was affected by reservoir temperature and amount of water injected into the reservoir for enhancing oil recovery. Comparing experimental and simulation results and also the erratic trend of data show that the neural networks have modeled this system properly. Considering the effects of nonlinear factors and their erratic and unknown impacts on recovered oil, the perceptron neural network can develop a proper model for oil recovery factor in various conditions. The neural networks have not been... 

Viscosity of crude oil is a fundamental factor in simulating reservoirs, forecasting production as well as planning thermal enhanced oil recovery methods which make its accurate determination necessary. Experimental determination of reservoir oil viscosity is costly and time consuming. Hence, searching for quick and accurate determination of reservoir oil viscosity is inevitable. The objective of this study is to present a reliable, and predictive model namely, Least-Squares Support Vector Machine (LSSVM) to predict reservoir oil viscosity. To this end, three LSSVM models have been developed for prediction of reservoir oil viscosity in the three regions including, under-saturated, saturated... 

Bubble point pressure is a crucial PVT parameter of reservoir fluids, which has a significant effect on oil field development strategies, reservoir evaluation and production calculations. This communication presents a new mathematical model to calculate the saturation pressures of crude oils as a function of temperature, hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon reservoir fluid compositions, and characteristics of the heptane-plus fraction. The model was developed and tested using a total set of 130 experimentally measured compositions and saturation pressures of crude oil samples from different geographical locations covering wide ranges of crude oil properties and reservoir temperatures. In-depth... 

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... 

Asphaltene deposition during oil production and transportation causes extensive damage to reservoirs and wellhead equipment. In this study, the effects of native and non-native resins as well as those of their mixtures on the asphaltene deposition process are investigated. A novel pressure, volume, and temperature (PVT) visual cell is used to check the effect of resin on asphaltene deposition at different pressures and reservoir temperatures. Two Iranian crude oil samples with different potentials of asphaltene deposition (low and high) were used in these tests. During depressurizing in the presence of native and non-native resins, the amount of asphaltene deposited was measured. To monitor... 

Temperature changes in and around the wellbore could lead to significant well performance and flow assurance issues. Despite its importance, near wellbore temperature change due to gas production and its importance on well performance is not well understood. Reduction of temperature in the near well bore section, could potentially lead to hydrate formation and as a result reduction of well performance. This work is aimed at evaluating the thermal behaviour in the near wellbore region of a low to tight permeability gas reservoir (ranging between 0.02 and 10 mD) during its natural depletion. The study is conducted by using a thermal-compositional simulator. The process required to simulate... 

Wettability alteration in porous media is one of the mechanisms for enhancing oil recovery through injecting low-salinity water into carbonate reservoirs, in which active ions can remove the carboxylic oil component from the rock surface, altering the rock's wettability toward a water-wet condition. This study investigated the concomitant effects of low-salinity water and hydrophilic SiO2 nanoparticles on oil-wet dolomite rock. Results revealed that low-salinity water coupled with hydrophilic nano-SiO2 in oil-wet dolomite rock remarkably affected the wettability alteration of the rock, showing that the simultaneous presence of ions in water and hydrophilic nano-SiO2 led to considerable... 

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... 

Asphaltene deposition is an issue that has received much attention since it has been shown to be the cause of major production problems. It leads to permeability reduction under the processes of natural depletion as well as hydrocarbon gas/CO2 injection. Though a great deal of researches have focused on studying permeability impairment in reservoir rocks, little is known about the asphaltene deposition mechanisms that control the permeability reduction for Iranian reservoirs. In this work, an experimental effort is made to investigate the permeability impairment of core samples of Iranian oil reservoirs. The experiments are performed on both sandstone and carbonate rock types at reservoir... 

Nitrogen has been appeared as a competitive gas injection alternative for gas-based enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes. Minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) is the most important parameter to successfully design N2 flooding, which is traditionally measured through time consuming, expensive and cumbersome experiments. In this communication, genetic programming (GP) and constrained multivariable search methods have been combined to create a simple correlation for accurate determination of the MMP of N2-crude oil, based on the explicit functionality of reservoir temperature as well as thermodynamic properties of crude oil and injection gas. The parameters of the developed... 

Gas flooding processes have emerged as attractive enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods over the last few decades. Among different gas flooding processes, CO2 flooding is recognized as being most efficient for displacing oil through miscible displacement. Minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) is a crucial parameter for successfully designing CO2 flooding, which is traditionally measured through time-consuming, expensive, and cumbersome experiments. In the present study, a new reliable model based on feed-forward artificial neural networks was presented to predict both pure and impure CO2-crude oil MMP. Among various properties and parameters, reservoir temperature, reservoir oil composition, and... 

In this paper, the performance of three imidazolium-based ionic liquids (ILs) including 1-hexyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([HMIM][Cl] or IL6), 1-octyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([OMIM][Cl] or IL8), and 1- dodecyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride ([DMIM][Cl] or IL12) in reducing the interfacial tension (IFT) between crude oil and IL solutions was analyzed for the first time under a wide range of salinities (1000 to 195 476 ppm) at a reservoir temperature of 80 °C. The purpose was to microscopically analyze the occurring phenomenon at the fluid-fluid interface to determine the mechanism leading to oil extraction and to address the existing ambiguities in the literature concerning the... 

The objective of this study was to experimentally investigate the performance of water-alternating gas (WAG) injection in one of Iran's oil reservoirs that encountered a severe pressure drop in recent years. Because one of the most appropriate studies to evaluate the reservoir occurs generally on rock cores taken from the reservoir, core samples drilled out of the reservoir's rock matrix were used for alternating injection of water and gas. In the experiments, the fluid system consisted of reservoir dead oil, live oil, Co 2, and synthetic brine; the porous media were a number of carbonate cores chosen from the oilfield from which the oil samples had been taken. All coreflood experiments were...