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Experimental and Modeling Investigation of the Near Wellbore Asphaltene Deposition Damage Removal by Ultrasonic Waves

Keshavarzi, Behnam | 2013

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 44909 (06)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Ghotbi, Cyrus; Ghazanfari, Mohammad Hossein
  7. Abstract:
  8. 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 could significantly stimulate the damaged permeability from asphaltene deposition. The value of stimulated permeability increased with increasing the ultrasonic time and ultrasonic power, and decreased with increasing the distance between ultrasonic horn and plug. It was found that there is an optimum value for ultrasonic exposure time and ultrasonic power after which the stimulation ratio is not significantly enhanced. The obtained data were used for developing a stimulated permeability correlation. The proposed correlation might be a good alternative to provide a fast estimation of stimulated permeability without performing time consuming and expensive experiments.
    Afterward, a new dynamic model was proposed to predict the influence of ultrasonic waves on asphaltene damage removal in core scale through a modification on Wang and Civan (2001) model of asphaltene transport in porous media. The proposed dynamic model could accurately predict the variations in the permeability of the plug samples. The common parameters of the dynamic core-scale model as well as the introduced ultrasonic stimulation parameters, found by history matching of the dynamic model to the experimental data, were used for developing a single-well reservoir model to simulate the process of asphaltene damage stimulation/improved oil recovery by applying ultrasonic waves in the near wellbore region. The results of the single well reservoir model also showed significant positive effects of ultrasonic waves for decreasing the rate of productivity decline of the reservoir. This work illustrates successful extension of core flood experiments to reservoir model in order to examine the influence of ultrasonic waves for improving oil recovery. Therefore, the outcomes can be helpful for developing new commercial simulator incorporating the effect of ultrasound in reservoir performance
  9. Keywords:
  10. Ultrasonic Waves ; Permeability ; Dynamic Modeling ; Formation Damage ; Asphaltene Deposition

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