Sharif Digital Repository

VAPEX is a relatively new EOR process for the recovery of heavy oil. In this process solvent is used to form a vapor chamber within a reservoir. Vapor dissolves in the oil and diluted oil drains by gravity to a horizontal production well. The essential features of this recovery mechanism have been discussed in this study. Furthermore, a semi-analytical and a simulation study of VAPEX process have been performed on a specified Iranian heavy oil reservoir (such as Kuh-e-Mond). The aim of this study is to investigate an exponential functionality (correlation) witch incorporates all physical parameters that affect the production rate of VAPEX process in dimensionless form. The adjustable... 

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... 

Asphaltene precipitation and deposition may cause severe problems during different stages of oil recovery. All proposed remediation techniques have proven costly and not highly effective, so prevention becomes the most beneficial way to counteract the problem. Revelation of the deposition mechanism and determination of the parameters are necessary in order to devise reliable prevention strategies.This work presents results of the effect of lean gas and CO2 injection process as well as natural depletion on dynamic asphaltene precipitation and deposition. In addition sets of experiments were performed in the same porous media using STO and solvent (with different volume ratios) to investigate... 

Gas-oil displacement, when stabilized by gravity forces leads to high displacement efficiency, as manifested in high recovery factor associated with gas-cap drive and gravity drainage. The main objective of this research is improved understanding of drainage behavior and changes in flow properties when the importance of viscous, gravity and capillary forces varies. The influence of interplaying between controlling forces on relative permeabilities is also studied. Another objective of this work is to study effect of wettability on recovery under forced gravity drainage. To study drainage behavior under various dominant driving/resistive forces, a number of forced gravity drainage experiments... 

Due to the importance of enhanced oil recovery of heavy oil fractured reservoirs, in this work micromodel setup has been used to study the miscible solvent injection in five-spot fractured reservoirs with different fracture geometrical characteristics. Due to the visual nature and flexibility of the micromodel patterns it is a subject of interest to be used in different studies. Different patterns has been constructed by chemical etching and controlled laser etching and saturated with displaced fluid and flooded by constant rate injection of hydrocarbon solvent in abient temperature and pressure. At first, effect of fracture’s length, numbering, orientation, discontinuity and scattering on... 

Most of the heavy oil reservoirs contain discontinuous shaly structures which affect fluid flow through porous media as well as oil recovery efficiency during EOR processes. However, selecting the best EOR technique which maximizes the oil recovery remains a topic of debate in the literature. In addition the effect of shale geometrical characteristics including: spacing from wells, discontinuity, orientation, number of shale streaks, shale's spacing and length on oil recovery factor are not well understood. In this work experiments have been performed on one-quarter five-spot glass micromodels. These models have been developed by a new method using laser technology. Generally, this research... 

Reservoir lifetime optimization is an important issue. The policies that are used for maximum production using optimization methods become challenging in the presence of uncertainty. Robust Optimization (RO) method is a technique to deal with uncertainty. Because of insufficient data, uncertainty is an inherent characteristic of reservoir model. This leads to inexact solutions of an optimization problem. Also, design based on uncertainty in economic parameters, especially uncertain oil price is a challenging issue. Taking the uncertainty explicitly is a solution when there is no measurement available. To take into account uncertainty several possible values (realizations) for the uncertainty... 

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...