Sharif Digital Repository

Asphaltene deposition on reservoir rocks occurs during natural depletion as well as miscible injection processes. It causes reduction of effective pore space and consequent impairment of the ability of oil to flow through reservoir. Therefore, deposition of asphaltene causes significant formation damage and wellbore plugging, requiring expensive and difficult cleanup procedures. Thus it is necessary to be able to consider the onset, amount of deposition and also consequent damage of permeability and porosity reduction due to various factors. The objective of current work is to conduct experimental and simulation study of asphaltene deposition dynamics in one of the Iranian reservoirs. In... 

Thermodynamic modeling is a useful method for predicting of asphaltene precipitation due to various reasons, such as CO2 injection, mixing of different oils in oil storage and pressure changes. However, the application of solid model and thermodynamic micellization model, for prediction of asphaltene precipitation under gas injection condition, hasnot been improved. In this work, two computer codes which are based on two different asphaltene precipitation thermodynamic models, 1-Thermodynamic Micellization Model and 2- Solid Model, have been developed, and, used for predicting of asphaltene precipitation data reported in the literature as well as the experimental data obtained from high... 

Nitrogen injection is a promising enhanced oil recovery process. Asphaltene precipitation during miscible gas injection is a common problem in oilfields throughout the world. In this work, a comprehensive study is conducted on effect of gas injection on phase behavior and asphaltene instability of live oil samples. Effects of oil API, gas type and concentration, pressure and temperature are studied under natural depletion and nitrogen injection processes by means of high pressure filtration and a photographic procedure coupled with image analysis. Filtration results show that nitrogen destabilizes asphaltenes more compared to methane and the problem is more severe for heavier crude samples.... 

This work concerns with experimental and modeling investigation of the asphaltene damage removal using ultrasonic wave irradiation. A specific core holder apparatus was designed and utilized for in situ ultrasonic exposure to damaged core plug at different conditions of exposure time, ultrasound power and distances between sound source and plug. Injection of many pore volumes of an asphaltenic crude oil was used for creating asphaltene induced damaged in porous media through permeability measurements. The deposited asphaltene during oil injection as well as asphaltene removal due to ultrasonic exposure was evaluated using IP-143 analysis. The results revealed that ultrasound application... 

Additional to Temperature, Pressure and Compositional changes of crude oils, Electro-kinetics and Electrical potential effects are also known as the most influencing parameters on Asphaltene deposition during oil production and processing.Mechanisms of electro-kinetics and asphaltene charge generation are very complex and unclear. In the previous studies on asphaltene precipitation and deposition, mostly electro-kinetics effects are ignored.While, recent studies show the great effects of electrical filed on asphaltene deposition during production and processing phase of crude oils.At reservoir porous medium and crude flow line, an electrical field can be developed along the length of the... 

Interfacial Tension (IFT) behavior of crude oil/CO2 system is recognized as the main factor affecting the efficiency of CO2 flooding during enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process. Adding paraffin group hydrocarbon to asphaltenic crude oils as an asphaltene precipitant component is aimed to mimic asphaltene precipitation process during crude oil production and transportation. Asphaltene precipitation would critically effects the IFT behavior of crude oil/CO2 systems. In the first part of this study, the equilibrium densities of oil samples which contain different heptane ratio were measured at different pressures and the temperature of 323 K. Then, the equilibrium IFT between CO2 and the crude... 

This study investigates the dynamic adsorption of asphaltene-in-toluene solutions on pack of wet calcite. All experiments were performed on mineral packs in sand-pack with mesh sizes between 100 to 140 (105 to 150 micron) and porosities between 40 to 46 percent. A UV–vis spectrophotometer was used to monitor the outlet concentration of asphaltenes. Experiments were performed for seven ionic strength of sodium chloride (6 to 1500 mM), five ionic strength of sodium sulfate (6 to 2400 mM) and four ionic strength of these salts mixture (12 to 3300 mM). In previous experiments the asphaltene concentration is 500 mg/l. Also two experments were performed with asphaltene concentration of 2000... 

Formation damage is probable to occur while drilling, work-over operations, and well completion in near wellbore zone due to different reasons; which leads to excess pressure drop through this area. Well stimulation operations are proposed to remove these damages and improve oil production; among which, acidizing is known as a traditional applicable method to stimulate oil and gas wells. Although this approach is accepted and chosen as a well stimulation method to remove formation damages, its poor design and implementation results in new formation damages. One of these arises when acid contacts asphaltic oil, which causes asphaltene particle instability and asphaltic sludge rapid... 

Asphaltene, the heaviest and most polarizable fraction of crude oil, has a potential to precipitate, deposit and plug pipelines, causing considerable production costs. The main objective of this study is to contribute to the thermodynamic and transport modeling of asphaltene in order to predict its precipitation, segregation and deposition. Potential calculation of some thermophysical properties of asphaltene is also explored. Predicting the flow assurance issues caused by asphaltene requires the ability to model the phase behavior of asphaltene as a function of pressure, temperature and composition. It has been previously demonstrated that the Perturbed Chain form of Statistical Association... 

Asphaltene, known as the heaviest and the most polar component of the crude oil, can precipitate because of the changes in the fluid condition such as pressure, temperature and composition. Asphaltene deposition causes major problems during oil production, in the form of fluid viscosity changes, wellbore damage and fouling in pipelines. The remediation of these problems is very expensive and needs to halt down the crude oil production. The use of electric field has been proposed recently as clean and cheap technique that could also be applied during the production period. In this work, the effect of electric potential on asphaltene precipitation in both static and dynamic modes has been... 

Asphaltenes are a polydisperse mixture of the heaviest and most polarizable fractions of the crude oil. They are defined according to their solubility properties as being soluble in aromatic solvents but insoluble in light paraffin solvents. Asphaltenes are usually responsible for many problems like wettability changes of the reservoir rock, pore clogging in the reservoir porous matrix and fouling in wellbore tubing and production surface facilities. Most of the studies in the literature, addressing the asphaltene precipitation and deposition (APD), are investigating natural depletion or gas injection process such as CO2 flooding. These studies show that asphaltene deposition and... 

The aim of this project was to upgrade and reduce viscosity of heavy oils by adsorbing of asphaltene on Ni-Mo/CB and converting it into lighter and more valuable gas and liquid compounds. Asphaltene has been extracted from a heavy crude oil sample of Soroush oil field in Iran. After adsorption, Asphaltene conversion to lighter components (gas/liquid) was studied through hydrocracking process. To prepare the support of catalyst, Carbon Black, initially a thermal treatment step under the argon gas atmosphere followed by acid-washing process was performed. Afterward, the catalysts was prepared through dry impregnation method. In order to activate catalyst for hydrocracking, the catalysts has... 

In this research, the behavior of surfactin at the presence of water, decane, and asphaltene is investigated. Decane is chosen instead of crude oil to simplify the model. In the first chapter, basic molecular structures are introduced. Furthermore, in the second chapter molecular dynamics simulation, as the main tool in these simulations, is introduced. In the third chapter, one of the most important quantities in chemical engineering, diffusion coefficient, is chosen to investigate the efficiency and accuracy of molecular dynamics simulation method to calculate such a quantity and results show that molecular dynamics simulation can present accurate quantities, more accurate than common... 

Interfacial Tension (IFT) as a main parameter for gas flooding efficiency in oil reservoirs depends highly on pressure, temperature, and composition of the reservoir fluids. Therefore, it is important to measure this parameter at real reservoir condition for successful field development plan. In this study, an axisymmetric drop shape analysis (ADSA) has been utilized to measure the equilibrium IFTs in crude oil-CO2 as well as crude oil-N2 systems at different temperatures and pressures. Moreover, minimum miscibility pressures (MMP) and first-contact miscibility pressures (Pmax) of crude oil/CO2 and crude oil/N2 systems at different temperature levels are determined by applying vanishing... 

Asphaltine particle precipitation may lead to serious problems in petroleum industry; including wellbore transmissibility reduction. One of the proposed remedial methods is to make a use of the microorganisms which are able to consume the heavy hydrocarbon chains.
Hydrophobicity of a cell surface is one of the parameters which greatly affect the microorganism adhesion to water insoluble hydrocarbons, in which results a higher hydrocarbon biodegradation. Consequently as the hydrophobicity of a cell surface increases; the microorganism tendency to bond with the hydrocarbon molecule enhances. The presence of a surface active agent, as an instance a chemical surfactant, will affect the... 

Microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR) is a collection of techniques that utilize microorganisms and their metabolic products to improve the recovery of crude oil from reservoir rock. From the advantages of this method, independency to the oil price and environmental benign can be mentioned. Many mechanisms have been proposed to contribute on MEOR, but still there is no enough knowledge about the mechanisms that causes inabilities in manipulating the process to get more oil production.
In the present study, the effect of a native type of bacteria, Enterobacter cloacae, on the glass surfaces wettability which were aged in expose of model oil with different asphaltene concentration was... 

In this work, a new model based on the multilayer adsorption kinetic mechanism and four material balance equations for oil, asphaltene, gas and water phase has been developed to account asphaltene deposition in porous media under dynamic condition and the model was verified using experimental data obtained in this work and also with those reported in the literature. The results showed that the developed model can correlate more accurately the oil flooding experimental data in comparison to the previous models based on the mechanical plugging mechanism, in particular in carbonate core samples. Also, a series of experiments was carried to determine the permeability reduction of carbonate,... 

Given the decreasing trend of light petroleum reserves and the necessity to produce heavy and extra-heavy oil resources, the challenge of dealing with existing asphaltene related problems, which is the heaviest and the most complex component of crude oil, has become increasingly tangible. Asphaltene precipitates and deposits due to pressure, temperature or composition alterations which leads to obstruction of porous media and production facilities. Set the costly methods aside, one of the available approaches to prevent asphaltene precipitation, is to apply an electric field upon the suspected zone, which is cheap and uncomplicated. Besides, utilizing nano-particles while applying electric... 

Formation, precipitation and deposition of heavy organic compounds of petroleum fluids including, but not limited to, asphaltene in oil reservoirs and production systems have been by far the most important and challenging flow assurance problems. Therefore, preventative actions to control organic deposits in oil formations and production systems which can lead inevitably to reduction or cessation in production, have always been a main challenge for oil producers.In this thesis, a one dimensional simulator have been developed to study asphaltene precipitation, aggregation and deposition in an oil well column at isothermal and non-isothermal conditions. While the previously proposed PC-SAFT... 

Wax precipitation may occur in production or transportation of crude oil form field which is a serious problem in petroleum industry. Flow assurance issues concerning wax precipitation make it necessary to develop a precise thermodynamic model to predict the wax appearance temperature and amount of precipitation at different conditions. In this work a new procedure has been proposed to characterize crude oil based on the SARA test considering the wax and asphaltene as single pseudo components. Two scenarios have been investigated for the survey of the crude oil characterization, with and without asphaltene pseudo component. Also, in this work, the Perturbed ...