Sharif Digital Repository

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... 

In this paper, the impact of three parameters including nanoparticles geometry, particles aggregation and borehole inclination on induced formation damage from water based drilling fluids were investigated by means of experimental studies. Accordingly, we designed a dynamic filtration setup capable to rotate and change well inclination. Nano-based drilling fluids consisting of spherical, cubical and tubular shapes nanoparticles as fluid loss additives were used. Mud cake quality, core permeability impairment and degree of formation damage at various well inclinations were examined. The cluster structure of aggregated particles were determined using fractal theory and applying dynamic light... 

In this paper, the impact of three parameters including nanoparticles geometry, particles aggregation and borehole inclination on induced formation damage from water based drilling fluids were investigated by means of experimental studies. Accordingly, we designed a dynamic filtration setup capable to rotate and change well inclination. Nano-based drilling fluids consisting of spherical, cubical and tubular shapes nanoparticles as fluid loss additives were used. Mud cake quality, core permeability impairment and degree of formation damage at various well inclinations were examined. The cluster structure of aggregated particles were determined using fractal theory and applying dynamic light... 

Colloidal gas aphrons (CGAs) are progressive operational fluids used in different areas such as engineering fields due to their unique characteristics. In between, the application of nanoparticle in several fields of engineering has received considerable attention in recent years. However, little or no information is available regarding the application of nanoparticle in CGA suspensions. In this study, the size distribution of bubbles, stability, API filtrate and rheology of a new type of these fluids called nanoparticle-enhanced colloidal gas aphron (NCGA)-based fluids are investigated. NCGAs’ stability is studied by measuring drainage rate tests. Also, for the investigation of fluid flow... 

This paper proposes a hierarchical active power management strategy for a medium voltage (MV) islanded microgrid including a multihybrid power conversion system (MHPCS). To guarantee excellent power management, a modular power conversion system is realized by parallel connection of small MHPCS units. The hybrid system includes fuel cells (FC) as main and supercapacitors (SC) as complementary power sources. The SC energy storage compensates the slow transient response of the FC stack and supports the FC to meet the grid power demand. The proposed control strategy of the MHPCS comprises three control loops; dc-link voltage controller, power management controller, and load current sharing... 

Excess pressure drop induced by inertial effects limits the applicability of Darcy's law for modeling of fluid flow through porous media at high velocities. It is expected such additional pressure drop is influenced by pore/morphology of porous media. This work concerns with fundamental understanding of how throat curvature affects intrinsic properties of porous media at non-Darcy flow conditions using network modeling. Conical, parabolic, hyperbolic, and sinusoidal capillary ducts with three types of imposed anisotropy are used to construct the network in a more realistic manner. Solutions of one dimensional Navier-Stokes equation for incompressible fluid flow through converging/diverging... 

The network modeling approach is applied to provide a new insight into the onset of non-Darcy flow through porous media. The analytical solutions of one-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation in sinusoidal and conical converging/diverging throats are used to calculate the pressure drop/flow rate responses in the capillaries of the network. The analysis of flow in a single pore revealed that there are two different regions for the flow coefficient ratio as a function of the aspect ratio. It is found that the critical Reynolds number strongly depends on the pore geometrical properties including throat length, average aspect ratio, and average coordination number of the porous media, and an... 

Despite the numerous experimental studies, there is a lack of fundamental understanding about how the local and global heterogeneity control the efficiency of polymer flooding. In this work a series of water and polymer injection processes are performed on five-spot glass micromodels which are initially saturated with the crude oil at varying conditions of flow rate, water salinity, polymer type and concentration. Three different pore structures in combine with different layer orientations are considered for designing of five different micromodel patterns. It has been observed that the oil recovery of water flooding is increasing with the salinity concentration, for the ranges studied here.... 

This work concerns the experimental investigation of surfactant alternating CO 2 injection in carbonate rocks. The core samples provided from a low-temperature fractured light oil reservoir, located in southwest Iran. The experiments were designed to observe the effect of CO 2-foam injection on gas mobility and oil recovery at different surfactant concentrations. The core samples were initially saturated with synthetic/field brine, 5,000 ppm, and then flooded with live oil to reach connate water saturation at reservoir condition, 115F and 1,700 psia. The commercial surfactant used was sodium lauryl sulfate as an anionic surfactant. The results of this work, along with field-scale simulation... 

Many oil reservoirs encounter asphaltene precipitation as a major problem during natural production. In spite of numerous experimental studies, the effect of temperature on asphaltene precipitation during pressure depletion at reservoir conditions is still obscure in the literature. To study their asphaltene precipitation behavior at different temperatures, two Iranian light and heavy live oil samples were selected. First, different screening criteria were applied to evaluate asphaltene instability of the selected reservoirs using pressure, volume, and temperature data. Then, a high pressure, high temperature filtration (HPHT) setup was designed to investigate the asphaltene precipitation... 

This work concerns observing the pressure as well as CO2 mole percentage effects on asphaltene molecular weight distributions at reservoir conditions. A high-pressure, high-temperature asphaltene measurement setup was applied, and the amount of precipitated asphaltene at different pressures as well as CO2 mole percentage in an Iranian heavy crude oil was measured. Moreover, the asphaltene molecular weight distributions during titration of crude oil with different n-alkanes were investigated. The gel permeation chromatography (GPC) apparatus was used for characterization of asphaltene molecular weight under different conditions. It has been observed that some thermodynamic changes such as... 

This paper resolve the salinity-dependent interactions of polar components of crude oil at calcite-brine interface in atomic resolution. Molecular dynamics simulations carried out on the present study showed that ordered water monolayers develop immediate to a calcite substrate in contact with a saline solution. Carboxylic compounds, herein represented by benzoic acid (BA), penetrate into those hydration layers and directly linking to the calcite surface. Through a mechanism termed screening effect, development of hydrogen bonding between –COOH functional groups of BA and carbonate groups is inhibited by formation of a positively-charged Na+ layer over CaCO3 surface. Contrary to the common... 

Estimation of the viscosity of naturally occurring petroleum gases is essential to provide more accurate analysis of gas reservoir engineering problems. In this study, a new soft computing approach, namely, least square support vector machine (LSSVM) modeling, optimized with a coupled simulated annealing technique was applied for estimation of the natural gas viscosities at different temperature and pressure conditions. This model was developed based on 2485 viscosity data sets of 22 gas mixtures. The model predictions showed an average absolute relative error of 0.26% and a correlation coefficient of 0.99. The results of the proposed model were also compared with the well-known predictive... 

Many reservoir and production engineers face asphaltene precipitation as a major problem during miscible carbon dioxide flooding projects. Experimental studies regarding asphaltene precipitation are therefore employed to assist in selecting appropriate facilities and proper operation schemes. During this study, a series of high pressure, high temperature experiments are designed and performed to analyze asphaltene precipitation behavior of an Iranian light reservoir crude at reservoir conditions due to natural production and miscible CO2 gas injection. For both sets of experiments, two different temperature levels (including reservoir temperature) are selected to investigate the role of... 

In recent years, polysilicon nanoparticles are used to enhance the oil recovery through the water injection process in oilfields. The contributing mechanisms are the reduction of interfacial tension and wettability alteration which lead to improving or decreasing the oil phase relative permeability and can be traced by change of relative permeability curves. However, profound understanding of the effect of dispersed nano-silica particles on the hysteretic behavior of relative permeability curves remains a controversy topic in the literature.The current study illustrates the influence of dispersed silica particles on hysteretic trend of two-phase curves of oil-water relative permeability.... 

Reliable relative permeability curves of oil-gas systems are important for successful simulation and modeling of gas injection, especially when the miscibility condition approaches. In this work, the relative permeability of a CO2-light oil system has been measured under different conditions, using the Civan and Donaldson (1989) [13] method. Dolomite and sandstone core samples were used in the experiments. The minimum miscibility pressure was calculated using an empirical correlation, as well as slim-tube simulation. Due to some controversial assumptions of the Civan and Donaldson method, such as immiscible and incompressible displacement, history matching was used for predicting the... 

Many heavy oil reservoirs contain discontinuous shales which act as barriers or baffles to flow. However, there is a lack of fundamental understanding about how the shale geometrical characteristics affect the reservoir performance, especially during polymer flooding of heavy oils. In this study, a series of polymer injection processes have been performed on five-spot glass micromodels with different shale geometrical characteristics that are initially saturated with the heavy oil. The available geological characteristics from one of the Iranian oilfields were considered for the construction of the flow patterns by using a controlled-laser technology. Oil recoveries as a function of pore... 

The requirement of reliable relative permeability data is more intensified when the miscibility condition approaches. In this work the relative permeability of CO2 and oil has been measured at different miscibility conditions using conventional methods. Fractured dolomite and sandstone core plugs samples were used in the experiments. Due to some errorful assumptions of conventional methods such as immiscible, incompressible displacement, inverse modeling was used for predicting the reliable relative permeability of oil and gas phases at near miscible condition from measured oil production and pressure drop data. The initial guesses of relative permeabilities were provided from conventional... 

In this work the Fourier series and Zakian and Schapery methods are considered to numerically solve the Laplace transform of a pressure distribution equation for radial flow and to generate the type curves for three different boundary conditions. The results show that the Schapery method leads to approximate solutions for small values of dimensionless time. For large values, however, this method is almost accurate and hence is recommended because it is fast to apply compared to other algorithms. It has been found that the accuracy of the Schapery method for early time prediction can be improved to almost a perfect match with analytical results through multiplying the Schapery relation by a... 

Colloidal Gas Aphron (CGA) are finding increasing application in fields of science and engineering because of their distinctive characteristic. As interest in the application of CGA based fluids grows and in order to select the best procedure for using them in successful petroleum engineering operations, there is a need to gain a better understanding of the factors that affect their properties and behavior. This article discusses the rheological characterization, stability analysis and filtration properties of CGA based fluids for three bio-polymers and two ionic surfactant. The stability and filtration analysis were investigated with the static drain rate technique and API filtration tests,...