Sharif Digital Repository

Asphaltene precipitation and deposition causes many serious problems to the petroleum industry from the reservoir to the surface facilities. Therefore, it is important to bring it under control by finding a method to accelerate or slow down its precipitation and deposition. For achieving this purpose two parameters play an important role; onset point of the precipitation and amount of the deposited phase. When asphaltene precipitates, it is capable of depositing in the solution. After the deposition, the solution split into two phases; asphaltene-rich and asphaltene-lean. Determining the amount of the deposited phase needs to distinguish the interface between two phases. In this study, a... 

Investigating the impact of geological uncertainty (i.e., spatial distribution of fractures) on reservoir performance may aid management decisions. The conventional approach to address this is to build a number of possible reservoir models, upscale them, and then run flow simulations. The problem with this approach is that it is computationally very expensive. In this study, we use another approach based on the permeability contrasts that control the flow, called percolation approach. This assumes that the permeability disorder of a rock can be simplified to either permeable or impermeable. The advantage is that by using some universal laws from percolation theory, the effect of the complex... 

In this work, a double-high swirl gas turbine model combustor (GTMC) has been experimentally investigated to identify the effects of air partitioning and swirlers geometry on combustion characteristics in terms of flame stability, exhaust gas temperature, NOx generation, and combustion efficiency. This high swirl model combustor is originally developed in the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and known as GTMC and recently reconstructed at Sharif University's Combustion Laboratory (named as SGTMC). Here, SGTMC run for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) fuel and air oxidizer at room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Eleven different burner geometries, M1-M11, are considered for the aims of this... 

Mazut as a source content of various hydrocarbons is hard to be degraded and its cracking could turn mazut into useful materials. Nevertheless degradation of mazut by routine methods is too expensive but application of indigenous microorganisms as biocatalysts could be effective and important to lower the costs and expand its consumption. Mazut biodegradation can be improved using various strategies; Therefore in this study newly isolated strain Enterobacter cloacae BBRC 10061 was used in a method of gradual addition of mazut into medium and its results were compared with simple addition method. To investigate degradation of mazut by BBRC 10061, influence of increase of mazut concentration... 

The strong bases statistical associated fluid theory (SAFT) equations of state allow modeling for a wide range of scales and applications. The equilibrium calculations are very time-consuming in SAFT-based family of equations of state; therefore the number of components used in describing a fluid mixture must be reduced by grouping. On the other hand, in some applications it is required to retrieve the detailed fluid description from equilibrium calculation performed on the lumped fluid description. The purpose of this paper is to develop a systematic approach for lumping and delumping with equilibrium calculations using the Perturbed Chain (PC)-SAFT equation of state. The methodology... 

This paper uses autoregressive jump intensity (ARJI) model to show that the oil price has both GARCH and conditional jump component. In fact, the distribution of oil prices is not normal, and oil price returns have conditional heteroskedasticity. Here the authors compare constant jump intensity with the dynamic jump intensity and evidences demonstrate that oil price returns have dynamic jump intensity. Therefore, there is strong evidence of time varying jump intensity Generalized Autoregressive Heteroscedasticity (GARCH) behavior in the oil price returns. The findings have several implications: first, it shows that oil price is highly sensitive to news, and it does settle around a trend in... 

Wettability is a key parameter affecting petrophysical properties of reservoir rocks. Mirzaei-Paiaman et al. (Energy Fuels 27:7360–7368, 2013) presented an index (referred to as MPMS) for laboratory characterization of wettability of native- or restored-state reservoir rock samples. To use this index two counter-current spontaneous imbibition (COUCSI) experiments are needed, one on the native- or restored-state core sample and another on the strongly water-wet (SWW) reference system. Slope analysis of recovery data in these two systems gives inputs for determination of MPMS index. The two systems must have the same pore structure, initial water saturation, and viscosity ratio. The case of... 

A set of conventional feedforward multilayer neural networks have been proposed to predict basic properties (e.g., critical temperature (T c), critical pressure (Pc), critical volume (V c), acentric factor (ω) and molecular weight (MW)) of pure compounds and petroleum fractions based on their normal boiling point (T b) and liquid density at 293 K. The accuracy of the method is evaluated by its application for basic property estimation of various components not used in the development of the method. Furthermore, the performance of the method is compared against the performance of the other alternatives reported as the most accurate and general methods for basic property prediction. Results of... 

This work aims to discuss the results of wide ranges of laboratory investigations to evaluate the performance of a newly-formulated surfactant for heavy oil reservoirs in order to improve the microscopic sweep efficiency after water flooding processes. In the first part, the specific behavior of the formulated surfactant including its salinity tolerance, interfacial tension, and optimum performance window was determined. Then, the application of surfactant solutions in real sandstone reservoir rocks was assessed for both oil-wet and water-wet cases. Besides, the effect of changing the capillary and viscous forces and interfacial tension on the residual phase saturations were characterized.... 

Steam injection process has been considered for a long time as an effective method to exploit heavy oil resources. Over the last decades, Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) has been proved as one of the best steam injection methods for recovery of unconventional oil resources. Recently, Fast-SAGD, a modification of the SAGD process, makes use of additional single horizontal wells alongside the SAGD well pair to expand the steam chamber laterally. This method uses fewer wells and reduces the operational cost compared to a SAGD operation requiring paired parallel wells one above the other. The efficiency of this new method in naturally fractured reservoir is not well understood.... 

Although alkaline-surfactant-polymer flooding is proved to be efficient for oil recovery from heavy oil reservoirs, the displacements mechanism/efficiency of this process in fractured systems needs to more discussion, especially in five-spot patterns. In this work, several ASP flooding test were performed on fractured micromodels which were initially saturated with heavy oil at constant flow rate and different fracture geometrical characteristics conditions. The ASP solutions are constituted from 5 polymers i.e. four synthetic polymers include three hydrolyzed polyacrylamide with different molecular weight as well as a non-hydrolyzed polyacrylamide and a biopolymer, 2 surfactants i.e. a... 

This paper summarizes the possibility of carbon dioxide gas Injection and compares the results with natural depletion in one of Iranian under saturated oil reservoir. At first with using PVTi software and Eclipse simulator, slim tube test has been simulated and Minimum Miscibility Pressure (MMP) of carbon dioxide gas with reservoir fluid determined then simulation of CO2 injection had done and at the end assessment of economic conditions for CO2 injection had been considered. Results had shown CO2 is an optimized choice for gas injection in this oil reservoir  

This work concerns with experimental investigation of CO2 WAG injection to light crude oil in near miscible conditions which has been rarely attended in the available literature. Here, several core flood experiments at three constant injection rates and four WAG ratios are conducted on sandstone rocks saturated with light crude oil in presence of saline water. The results showed that higher injection rate has a better performance regarding oil recovery for smaller PVs of injected fluids, while lower injection rate showed higher ultimate recovery for a 30% increase in injected PVs. Secondary continuous gas injection showed a superior performance than all the other WAG injections in different... 

In this work effect of composition changes of injection gas, CH4 + CO2, on the performance of immiscible WAG injection in light oil, 41 oAPI, which has been rarely attended in the available literature is investigated. Presence of CO2 helps to reduce the MMP of CH4 significantly. Core flood experiments are conducted at reservoir conditions and fixed flow rate of 0.5cc/min on a sandstone sample with the brine concentration of 5000 ppm, and the influence of injection gas composition as well as WAG ratio on oil recovery is investigated. Different mole percents of methane in mixture, 0%, to 100% are examined, and the tests continued to ten alternate cycles with a slug size of 0.1 pore volumes and... 

Relative permeability curves have practical implications in petroleum reservoir simulations. Study of the effects of reservoir wettability, pore shape geometry, and viscosity ratio of flowing fluids on the relative permeabilities is of great importance in reservoir modeling. In this paper, lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) is employed for analyzing the two-fluid flow in rigid porous media. The developed LBM code proved to be a robust numerical tool for analyzing the factors that influence the relative permeabilities of two immiscible fluids flowing through porous media. The numerically derived relative permeability curves demonstrate that in neutrally wet reservoirs, the effect of viscosity... 

hydraulic fracturing is one of the most prestigious mechanical methods which used as a facile production rate improvement method. Application of this method is in wells with low productivity index. Hydraulic fracturing efficiency depends on various factors, like fracture geometry, fluid composition and stress distribution. But some of them would be ignored. Such as fracture geometry which is neglected due to non-gravity and lack of investigation of DFN statistical population assumption. In this paper we develop a more comprehensive methodology based on fracture geometry, we aim to model one of the gas reservoirs which is naturally fractured, by using well-known commercial software. Based on... 

This work aims to discuss the results of wide ranges of laboratory investigations to evaluate the performance of a newly-formulated surfactant for heavy oil reservoirs in order to improve the microscopic sweep efficiency after water flooding processes. In the first part, the specific behavior of the formulated surfactant including its salinity tolerance, interfacial tension, and optimum performance window was determined. Then, the application of surfactant solutions in real sandstone reservoir rocks was assessed for both oil-wet and water-wet cases. Besides, the effect of changing the capillary and viscous forces and interfacial tension on the residual phase saturations were characterized.... 

Application of solar energy compared to conventional gas-burning boilers for steam generation in thermal Enhanced Oil Recovery processes is a newly attended technology, which brings significant benefits to the petroleum industry through environmental and economical aspects. This technique is especially designed for the regions in which gas-burning steam generation is not viable in large scale. The objective of this study is to investigate about viability of using solar energy to generate steam instead of using conventional steam generators in a Venezuelan extra heavy oil reservoir. Limited gas production policy of the Venezuelan government is the major challenge for utilizing gas steam...