Steam and nitrogen injection in improved heavy oil recovery / Injeção de vapor e nitrogenio na recuperação melhorada de oleo pesado

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2009

RESUMO

Thermal recovery methods, especially steam injection, are at the forefront of most onshore projects of heavy oil. The continuous injection and, recently, the steam assisted gravity drainage yield high recoveries. The ratio of the volume of steam injected per volume of produced oil is a decisive parameter in the success of steam flood projects. In the present work, an experimental and a numerical study were developed in the linear cell and a numerical study in the SAGD cell to better understand how the injection of nitrogen combined with steam contributes to the recovery mechanism, and to the possible reduction in volume of the injected steam. The experiment runs were conducted in a linear cell built for the continuous injection of steam. The studies were conducted at the lab scale using heavy oil originated from the Espírito Santo basin. The experiments in the linear cell consisted of continuously injecting steam or steam combined with nitrogen to recover oil. In the experiments, superheated steam at 170 ° C was injected at flow rates between 5 and 4,5 ml/min (cold-water equivalent) and nitrogen injected at rates between 50 and 180 ml/min. The main findings of the research (derived from five runs with consistent operating conditions) are as follows: 1) the injection of nitrogen combined with steam accelerates the start and peak of oil production compared to steam injection alone; 2) the improvement of steam oil ratio shows the beneficial effect of nitrogen injection in substitution to a substantial fraction of steam; 3) results indicates recovery factors exceeding 45%. On the numerical studies, the results from modelling of the linear cell show steam front behaviors in agreement to those observed experimentally. However, further investigation on the role of main parameters used for the history matching is necessary. The simulated results of SAGD - Wind Down shows that 84% of the production of conventional SAGD can be recovered with half of the volume of steam injected, indicating a reduction of steam oil ratio of 42%

ASSUNTO(S)

thermal oil recovery recuperação termica do petroleo steam laboratories vapor reservoir (simulation) nitrogen reservatorios (simulação) nitrogenio laboratorios

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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