Abstract
Hot solvent assisted oil recovery is a low emission-intensity oil recovery method from heavy oil resources. This method is particularly promising for fractured reservoirs where the application of current thermal methods may involve challenges associated with heat loss and early breakthrough. In this study a new model of heat and mass transfer for oil recovery from a single matrix block of a naturally fractured reservoir using a hot miscible solvent is developed. Due to the difference in magnitude between thermal and mass diffusivities, heat diffuses beyond the solvent-oil interface and there is no significant convective heat transfer. This results in a reduction of oil viscosity in the centre of the matrix block and a vertical convective flow pattern instead of parallel to the oil-solvent interface observed during cold solvent injection. Using this model optimisation graphs are developed to perform a fast qualitative assessment of the applicability of a hot solvent assisted gravity drainage process in naturally fractured reservoirs with various parameters without the need of complex simulations and experiments. An algorithm is presented to estimate the recovery time or target injection temperature of potential hot solvent assisted oil recovery processes using these optimisation graphs. This can reduce computational time and provide a quick evaluation of the hot solvent assisted gravity drainage process in naturally fractured heavy oil reservoirs.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3043-3058 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| Journal | Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue number | 8 |
| Early online date | 9 Feb 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 28 Feb 2018 |
Bibliographical note
The authors acknowledge the School of Engineering at the University of Aberdeen for providing the required facilities to complete this research. We are also grateful for technical comments from Mehrdad Taghizadeh Manzari (School of Geosciences at the University of Aberdeen). In addition to this, we appreciate the access to the Maxwell High Performance Computing Cluster of the University of Aberdeen IT Service (www.abdn.ac.uk/staffnet/research/hpc.php), provided by Dell Inc. and supported by Alces Software. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.Keywords
- hot solvent
- fractured reservoirs
- heat conduction
- solvent diffusion
- convection
- gravity drainage