Development and implantation of an operational setup designed for the evaluation of new tracers for oil reservoir characterization / Desenvolvimento e inplantação de um sistema operacional para a qualificação do desempenho de novos traçadores para reservatórios de petróleo

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

Petroleum, nowadays, is one of the most important natural resources in the world, since it is one of the main primary sources of energy and also raw material for many different products. It can be found accumulated in the subsoil, and was produced from the remaining portions of animals and vegetables, in a process that took millions of years to be concluded. Initially, only a small fraction of the oil contained in a reservoir (about 25% or less) can be extracted (phenomenon named sorption) or partitioned within the organic phase. Distinct mathematical models may represent the sorption without external help, and for this reason water is injected in the reservoir to increase the recovery of the remaining quantity. Aiming at optimizing this process, called Secondary Recovery, tracers are used to provide information concerning the water flow inside the reservoir. In order to be used as a tracer, a given compound must fulfill a series of requirements, depending on the desired purpose. Tracers applied to study the water behavior inside the reservoir, must follow water molecules without being retarded in the rocky surfaces processes, and the most used model establishes a linear relation between the sorbed amount of the compound and its remaining concentration in solution at equilibrium, expressed by the distribution coefficient, Kd. This coefficient can be estimated in different ways, laboratory methods such as stirring and flow-through being the most used. The latter has the advantage of incorporating hydrodynamic effects in its results. In the present work an automatized experimental system for carrying out tests of this nature has been constructed. Motor driven valves and a software for implementing remote control and acquisition of data have been developed. Sandstone samples from Botucatu Formations similar to reservoir rocks are widespreadly distributedand were used in these tests. The dynamics of this system was also investigated using NaCl as reference tracer, since its behavior is in quite good agreement with tha of tritiated water (considered the ideal tracer for water phases). Its concentration in the effluent was determined online by condutimetry, using a flow-through cell at horizontal position, since it changes the hydrodynamic behavior of the compound when vertically positioned. It was also confirmed that the NaCl concentration in the injected solution influences the profies of the tracer breakthrough curves obtained in flow-through experiments, suggesting that the transport of the ionic species Na+ and Cl- is slower than that of water. Moreover, the pump flowrate, which is is controlled by a balance connected to a computer, should be less than 5 mL/min. At higher values the balance will not be able to get stabilized upon fluctuations, thus compromising the transmission of signals to the computer. Finally, breakthrough curves from automatizated and manually controled experiments were compared, and a small difference between both could be observed, caused by the different way of calculating the injected volume in each test. In spite of these small limitations and discrepancies, the construction and automatization of the system for flow-through tests were successful.

ASSUNTO(S)

uso uses industria de petróleo petroleum industry técnicas de traçadores tracer techniques petroleo e petroquimica

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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