Measurements and predictions of Middle Eastern heavy crude oil viscosity using compositional data

Abstract Thermal enhanced oil recovery techniques, especially steam injection, are the most successful techniques for extra heavy crude oil reservoirs. Steam injection and its variations are based on the decrease in oil viscosity with increasing temperature. The main objective of this study is the development of advanced methods for the production of extra heavy crude oil in the oilfield of the Republic of Tatarstan. The filtration experiment was carried out on a bulk model of non-extracted core under reservoir conditions. The experiment involves the injection of slugs of fresh water, hot water and steam. At the stage of water injection, no oil production was observed while during steam injection recovery factor (RF) achieved 13.4 % indicating that fraction of immobile oil and non-vaporizing residual components is high and needed to be recovered by steam assisted EORs.

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Loss Coefficient for Viscous Mixtures of Light and Heavy Crude Oil in Y-Junctions

Volume 3: Operations, Monitoring and Maintenance; Materials and Joining ◽

10.1115/ipc2016-64372 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Andres Piñero ◽

Elionora Caldera ◽

Manuel Borregales ◽

Miguel Asuaje

Keyword(s):

Crude Oil ◽

Viscous Fluids ◽

Energy Losses ◽

Heavy Crude Oil ◽

Oil Viscosity ◽

Cfd Simulations ◽

Two Phase ◽

Oil Water ◽

Heavy Crude ◽

Water Cut

One of the challenges of transporting highly viscous crude oil is to ensure that the flow of oil will be delivered. It is also necessary to keep the operational standards and conditions along sections of pipes and fittings. Today, with low oil prices, it is important to minimize energy losses through the pipelines and accessories. However, new designs are often based on correlations that have not been developed for heavy oil water mixtures and are not frequently reported in the literature. Moreover, conventional calculations do not take into account the presence of accessory lines, or simply consider by empirically adding an extra percentage of energy loss or according to the engineer design test. Even more, the current correlations that could estimate accessory loss do not work well for viscous fluids and are even less suitable for the case of two-phase mixtures. For example, Gardel correlation [1] was made for water flow through yee type accessories. Applying this correlation to viscous fluids result in high deviations, more than 500% compared to CFD simulations. The present work attempts to predict the fluid dynamics behavior and the energy losses of these viscous fluids and mixtures (oil - water) going through a Yee type confluence. All simulations were carried out using ANSY CFX® v14.5. Mesh number of elements was optimized using Pipe-It® (optimization software). A grid independence study was also carried out automatically in Pipe-It® to ensure the quality of results. Several conditions have been simulated: angle confluence of 45°–75°, diameter ratio 2–7, oil viscosity from 10 to 105 cP, and water cut of 0–1. As the main result, a correlation that predicts the behavior of viscous mixtures in their passage through yee type confluences was developed using a genetic algorithms technique [2]. This correlation takes into account: viscosity, fluid fractions, input speeds, confluence angle and other parameters that are not normally considered by other authors. Therefore, it may be used in mixtures of water with light and heavy crude oil. Finally, correlations with 10% deviation compared to CFD simulations were obtained.

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Combined Analysis of Heavy Crude Oil Viscosity and Stress Acting on the Buried Oil Pipelines

Journal of Pipeline Systems Engineering and Practice ◽

10.1061/(asce)ps.1949-1204.0000509 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 04020059

Author(s):

Manigandan Sekar ◽

Praveenkumar Thaloor Ramesh ◽

Eshanthini Palanivelu

Keyword(s):

Crude Oil ◽

Heavy Crude Oil ◽

Oil Viscosity ◽

Combined Analysis ◽

Oil Pipelines ◽

Heavy Crude

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Experimental study of Iranian heavy crude oil viscosity reduction by diluting with heptane, methanol, toluene, gas condensate and naphtha

Petroleum ◽

10.1016/j.petlm.2016.08.012 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 2 (4) ◽

pp. 415-424 ◽

Cited By ~ 29

Author(s):

Amir Hossein Saeedi Dehaghani ◽

Mohammad Hasan Badizad

Keyword(s):

Experimental Study ◽

Crude Oil ◽

Gas Condensate ◽

Viscosity Reduction ◽

Heavy Crude Oil ◽

Oil Viscosity ◽

Heavy Crude

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Effect of Steam Quality on Extra-Heavy Crude Oil Upgrading and Oil Recovery Assisted with PdO and NiO-Functionalized Al2O3 Nanoparticles

Processes ◽

10.3390/pr9061009 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (6) ◽

pp. 1009

Author(s):

Luisana Cardona ◽

Oscar E. Medina ◽

Santiago Céspedes ◽

Sergio H. Lopera ◽

Farid B. Cortés ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Crude Oil ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

Mass Fraction ◽

Steam Injection ◽

Heavy Crude Oil ◽

Al2o3 Nanoparticles ◽

Steam Quality ◽

Oil Viscosity ◽

Overburden Pressure ◽

Heavy Crude

This work focuses on evaluating the effect of the steam quality on the upgrading and recovering extra-heavy crude oil in the presence and absence of two nanofluids. The nanofluids AlNi1 and AlNi1Pd1 consist of 500 mg·L−1 of alumina doped with 1.0% in mass fraction of Ni (AlNi1) and alumina doped with 1.0% in mass fraction of Ni and Pd (AlNi1Pd1), respectively, and 1000 mg·L−1 of tween 80 surfactant. Displacement tests are done in different stages, including (i) basic characterization, (ii) waterflooding, (iii) steam injection at 0.5 quality, (iv) steam injection at 1.0 quality, (v) batch injection of nanofluids, and (vi) steam injection after nanofluid injection at 0.5 and 1.0 qualities. The steam injection is realized at 210 °C, the reservoir temperature is fixed at 80 °C, and pore and overburden pressure at 1.03 MPa (150 psi) and 5.51 MPa (800 psi), respectively. After the steam injection at 0.5 and 1.0 quality, oil recovery is increased 3.0% and 7.0%, respectively, regarding the waterflooding stage, and no significant upgrade in crude oil is observed. Then, during the steam injection with nanoparticles, the AlNi1 and AlNi1Pd1 increase the oil recovery by 20.0% and 13.0% at 0.5 steam quality. Meanwhile, when steam is injected at 1.0 quality for both nanoparticles evaluated, no incremental oil is produced. The crude oil is highly upgraded for the AlNi1Pd1 system, reducing oil viscosity 99%, increasing the American Petroleum Institute (API)° from 6.9° to 13.3°, and reducing asphaltene content 50% at 0.5 quality. It is expected that this work will eventually help understand the appropriate conditions in which nanoparticles should be injected in a steam injection process to improve its efficiency in terms of oil recovery and crude oil quality.

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