Thermodynamic Analysis of Alternating Steam and Flue Gas Injection Process in Application to Heavy Oil Fields in Colombia

2021 ◽  
Vol 628 (6) ◽  
pp. 51-56
Author(s):  
V. A. Naletov ◽  
◽  
M. B. Glebov ◽  
A. Yu. Naletov ◽  
S. F. Muñoz ◽  
...  

This paper presents the thermodynamic analysis of the cyclic steam and flue gas injection process in application to heavy oil production for Colombian oilfields in order to improve oil recovery as well as reduce the environmental impact. The process comprises two subsystems: the steam generation subsystem and flue gas compression process. Working fluid parameters were selected based on the depth of the producing wells and the experimental data provided for Colombian oilfields. As part of the thermodynamic analysis, exergy losses were calculated for the subsystems operating separately as well as together in the cyclic flue gas-steam alternating injection process. The analysis was conducted for varying ratio between the duration and steam and flue gas injection over a five-day cycle. Is was determined that the efficiency of the subsystems operating together in the process (which is achieved by minimizing the total exergy losses) is drastically different depending on whether centralized power or local power generation is used for energy supply. It was concluded that an economic analysis is required in addition to the thermodynamic analysis. The varying part of the relative costs for the cyclic steam-flue gas injection process was assessed and it was shown that the optimal solution would be steam-flue gas injection with an injection ratio of 4.5:0.5 (for a five-day cycle) that uses a centralized power source.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianhua Qin ◽  
Jing Zhang ◽  
Shijie Zhu ◽  
Yingwei Wang ◽  
Tao Wan

Field observations discern that the oil production rate decreases substantially and water cut increases rapidly with the increase of steam injection cycles. Compared with steam drive, the advantage of flue gas (also called multi-component thermal gas) co-injection with steam is that flue gas can increase the reservoir pressure and expand the heating chamber. In this paper, the flue gas generated by fuel burning in the field was injected with steam to improve heavy oil recovery. This technique was investigated in the large laboratory 3D model and implemented in the field as well. The huff-n-puff process efficiency by flue gas, steam, and flue gas–steam co-injection was compared in the experiments. The field practice also demonstrated that the addition of non-condensable gas in the steam huff-n-puff process recovered more oil than steam alone. The temperature profile in the wellbore with flue gas injection is higher than that with steam injection since the low thermal conductivity of N2 reduces the heat loss. With the increase of stimulation cycles, the incremental oil recovery by flue gas injection declines significantly.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (22) ◽  
pp. 4308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evgeny Shilov ◽  
Alexey Cheremisin ◽  
Kirill Maksakov ◽  
Sergey Kharlanov

This work is devoted to CO2 Huff-n-Puff studies on heavy oil. Oil recovery for heavy oil reservoirs is sufficiently small in comparison with conventional reservoirs, and, due to the physical limitation of oil flow through porous media, a strong need for better understanding of tertiary recovery mechanisms of heavy oil exists. Notwithstanding that the idea of Huff-n-Puff gas injection technology for enhanced oil recovery has existed for dozens of years, there is still no any precise methodology for evaluating the applicability and efficiency of this technology in heavy oil reservoirs. Oil recovery factor is a question of vital importance for heavy oil reservoirs. In this work, we repeated Huff-n-Puff tests more than three times at five distinct pressure points to evaluate the applicability and efficiency of CO2 Huff-n-Puff injection to the heavy oil reservoirs. Additionally, the most critical factor that affects oil recovery in gas injection operation is the condition of miscibility. Experimental data allowed to distinguish the mixing zone of the light fractions of studied heavy oil samples. The experimental results showed that the pressure increase in the Huff-n-Puff injection process does not affect the oil recovery when the injection pressure stays between miscibility pressure of light components of oil and minimum miscibility pressure. It was detected that permeability decreases after Huff-n-Puff CO2 tests.


2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. S. Shokoya ◽  
S. A. (Raj) Mehta ◽  
R. G. Moore ◽  
B. B. Maini ◽  
M. Pooladi-Darvish ◽  
...  

Flue gas injection into light oil reservoirs could be a cost-effective gas displacement method for enhanced oil recovery, especially in low porosity and low permeability reservoirs. The flue gas could be generated in situ as obtained from the spontaneous ignition of oil when air is injected into a high temperature reservoir, or injected directly into the reservoir from some surface source. When operating at high pressures commonly found in deep light oil reservoirs, the flue gas may become miscible or near–miscible with the reservoir oil, thereby displacing it more efficiently than an immiscible gas flood. Some successful high pressure air injection (HPAI) projects have been reported in low permeability and low porosity light oil reservoirs. Spontaneous oil ignition was reported in some of these projects, at least from laboratory experiments; however, the mechanism by which the generated flue gas displaces the oil has not been discussed in clear terms in the literature. An experimental investigation was carried out to study the mechanism by which flue gases displace light oil at a reservoir temperature of 116°C and typical reservoir pressures ranging from 27.63 MPa to 46.06 MPa. The results showed that the flue gases displaced the oil in a forward contacting process resembling a combined vaporizing and condensing multi-contact gas drive mechanism. The flue gases also became near-miscible with the oil at elevated pressures, an indication that high pressure flue gas (or air) injection is a cost-effective process for enhanced recovery of light oils, compared to rich gas or water injection, with the potential of sequestering carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thaer I. Ismail ◽  
Emad W. Al-Shalabi ◽  
Mahmoud Bedewi ◽  
Waleed AlAmeri

Abstract Gas injection is one of the most commonly used enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods. However, there are multiple problems associated with gas injection including gravity override, viscous fingering, and channeling. These problems are due to an adverse mobility ratio and cause early breakthrough of the gas resulting, in poor recovery efficiency. A Water Alternating Gas (WAG) injection process is recommended to resolve these problems through better mobility control of gas, leading to better project economics. However, poor WAG design and lack of understanding of the different factors that control its performance might result in unfavorable oil recovery. Therefore, this study provides more insight into improving WAG oil recovery by optimizing different surface and subsurface WAG parameters using a coupled surface and subsurface simulator. Moreover, the work investigates the effects of hysteresis on WAG performance. This case study investigates a field named Volve, which is a decommissioned sandstone field in the North Sea. Experimental design of factors influencing WAG performance on this base case was studied. Sensitivity analysis was performed on different surface and subsurface WAG parameters including WAG ratio, time to start WAG, total gas slug size, cycle slug size, and tubing diameter. A full two-level factorial design was used for the sensitivity study. The significant parameters of interest were further optimized numerically to maximize oil recovery. The results showed that the total slug size is the most important parameter, followed by time to start WAG, and then cycle slug size. WAG ratio appeared in some of the interaction terms while tubing diameter effect was found to be negligible. The study also showed that phase hysteresis has little to no effect on oil recovery. Based on the optimization, it is recommended to perform waterflooding followed by tertiary WAG injection for maximizing oil recovery from the Volve field. Furthermore, miscible WAG injection resulted in an incremental oil recovery between 5 to 11% OOIP compared to conventional waterflooding. WAG optimization is case-dependent and hence, the findings of this study hold only for the studied case, but the workflow should be applicable to any reservoir. Unlike most previous work, this study investigates WAG optimization considering both surface and subsurface parameters using a coupled model.


2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (09) ◽  
pp. 22-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Ivory ◽  
Jeannine Chang ◽  
Roy Coates ◽  
Ken Forshner

2018 ◽  
Vol 140 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhanxi Pang ◽  
Peng Qi ◽  
Fengyi Zhang ◽  
Taotao Ge ◽  
Huiqing Liu

Heavy oil is an important hydrocarbon resource that plays a great role in petroleum supply for the world. Co-injection of steam and flue gas can be used to develop deep heavy oil reservoirs. In this paper, a series of gas dissolution experiments were implemented to analyze the properties variation of heavy oil. Then, sand-pack flooding experiments were carried out to optimize injection temperature and injection volume of this mixture. Finally, three-dimensional (3D) flooding experiments were completed to analyze the sweep efficiency and the oil recovery factor of flue gas + steam flooding. The role in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) mechanisms was summarized according to the experimental results. The results show that the dissolution of flue gas in heavy oil can largely reduce oil viscosity and its displacement efficiency is obviously higher than conventional steam injection. Flue gas gradually gathers at the top to displace remaining oil and to decrease heat loss of the reservoir top. The ultimate recovery is 49.49% that is 7.95% higher than steam flooding.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celal Hakan Canbaz ◽  
Cenk Temizel ◽  
Yildiray Palabiyik ◽  
Korhan Kor ◽  
Luky Hendrandingrat ◽  
...  

Abstract Oil Industry is going green and there is no solid and comprehensive publication that outlines the use of green energies and methods in oil recovery. Thus, this paper is going to close that gap. As there are more environmental restrictions especially in developed countries, inclusion of green energy methods in petroleum recovery processes is very important for the future of these reserves. We will focus on extra/heavy oil as conventional oil is simpler to produce and doesn't need EOR processes that may come with environmental footprints. The objective of this study is to investigate and outline the ‘green’ production and recovery processes of heavy oil recovery in environmentally-sensitive locations where greenhouse gas emissions, type of energy used to extract oil and gas (e.g., generation of steam using natural gas vs solar), environmental impact of surface facilities, transportation of produced oil and gas and other associated materials/chemica ls required for recovery (e.g. solvents for steam injection process) are critical for the operations as well as economics.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document