Sahar Afzal; Mohammad Nikookar; Mohammad Reza Ehsani; Emad Roayaei
Abstract
Nanotechnology has the potential to introduce revolutionary changes to several areas of oil and gas industry such as exploration, production, enhanced oil recovery, and refining. In this paper, the effect of different concentrations of Fe2O3 nanoparticles as a catalyst on the heavy oil viscosity at various ...
Read More
Nanotechnology has the potential to introduce revolutionary changes to several areas of oil and gas industry such as exploration, production, enhanced oil recovery, and refining. In this paper, the effect of different concentrations of Fe2O3 nanoparticles as a catalyst on the heavy oil viscosity at various temperatures is studied. Furthermore, the effect of a mixture of Fe2O3 nanoparticles and steam injection on heavy oil recovery is studied in laboratory. The experimental tests show that some of these nanoparticles decrease the heavy oil viscosity less than 50% at certain concentrations at different temperatures. The reason for this viscosity reduction is that, similar to a catalyst, these nanoparticles activate some reactions. Our results of steam injection tests show that the injection of a Fe2O3 nanoparticle mixture increases heavy oil recovery because of cracking reactions which crack the C-S, C=C, and C≡C bonds of the heavy components of heavy oil and change them to light components.
Hossein Fazeli; Shahin Kord
Abstract
Thermal recovery involves well-known processes such as steam injection (cyclic steam stimulation, steam drive, and steam-assisted gravity drainage), in situ combustion, and a more recent technique that consists of heating the reservoir with electrical energy. When high frequency is used for heating, ...
Read More
Thermal recovery involves well-known processes such as steam injection (cyclic steam stimulation, steam drive, and steam-assisted gravity drainage), in situ combustion, and a more recent technique that consists of heating the reservoir with electrical energy. When high frequency is used for heating, it is called electromagnetic (EM) heating. The applications of EM heating for heavy-oil reservoirs can be especially beneficial where conventional methods cannot be used because of large depth, reservoir heterogeneity, or excessive heat losses. This process can be modeled to determine temperature distribution in the porous reservoir rock during EM heating. In this paper, the homotopy perturbation method (HPM), a powerful series-based analytical tool, is used to approximate the temperature distribution, which has been modeled using a partial differential equation and special assumptions when high frequency currents are used. This method decomposes a complex partial differential equation to a series of simple ordinary differential equations which are easy to solve. According to the comparison of the solutions obtained by HPM with those of a numerical method (NM), good agreement is achieved. Moreover, a sensitivity study is done to determine the effect of initial temperature, oil rate, frequency and input power on the accuracy of HPM.
