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Wei Yan and Erling H. Stenby Department of Chemical Engineering Technical University of Denmark
Contents
Overview Mechanism of miscibility Experimental study of gas injection MMP calculation Summary
Recovery methods
Primary recoveryby depletion Secondary recoveryby water/gas injection for pressure maintenance Tertiary recoveryafter primary and secondary Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR): something other than plain water or brine is being injected into the reservoir (Taber et al., SPE 35385)
EOR methods
The percentage of EOR projects continues to increase CO2 injection is the only method that has had a continuous increase
Supercritical extraction at reservoir conditions Easier miscibility than N2, flue gas, C1 Cheaper than liquid hydrocarbons Safer to handle and pressurize than hydrocarbon gases Reduction of GHG
CO2 sequestration cost: 40-60 $/ton CO2 credit: 1-20 $/ton CO2 (?)
Maximum permissible cost of carbon dioxide in $/Mscf for the North Sea (Blunt et al., 1993.)
Oil price ($/barrel) 10 2.83/1.62/1.07* 1.17/0.67/0.44 0.50/0.29/0.19 20 6.17/3.52/2.33 2.83/1.62/1.07 1.50/0.86/0.57 30 9.50/5.43/3.58 4.50/2.73/1.70 2.50/1.43/0.94
Displacement efficiency (CO2/extra oil) Volume ratio (Mscf/barrel) 3 6 10 Mass ratio 1.1 2.2 3.7
* The three numbers indicate the maximum price for rates of return r = 0/0.1/0.2
A carbon dioxide displacement would be profitable at a 10% rate of return at a gas price of over $3/Mscf (56$/ton).
Swelling of the oil phase Lowering of oil viscosity Reduction of interfacial tension Misciblility (no interfacial tension for miscible displacements)
0.0 0
0 1.0
Three components:
0.2 5
(0.20,0.55,0.25)
5 0.7
C
5 0.2
3 0.00
0.25
A 0.50
0.75
B1.00
0 0.0
FCM
Gas A
ion line
t dilu
P'>P
FCMP
0.20
0.40
Oil
0.80
1.00
Gas
Multicontact miscibility
Gas and oil become miscible by multiple contacts, through which (one or both of) their compositions are changed.
Easier than FCM For 1D gas injection, 100% recovery if MCM In reality, >90% recovery for swept area Three mechanisms
Vaporizing Condensing (No such thing in a real reservoir) Combined (Zick, 1986)
Vaporizing mechanism
2
Miscibility achieved in the displacement front/far from the well Dry gas/oil with sufficient intermediate components
3
cr it
ica lt ie lin e
G2 G1
Gas
1
System C1/C4/C10 just above MMP
Vaporizing mechanism
Gas saturation
Gas region
Gas/oil region
Oil region
Methane n-Butane
ln Ki
-1 -2 -3
n-Decane
Density (kg/m )
Liquid
Gas
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Dimensionless distance
Condensing mechanism
Intermediate components condense to oil Miscibility achieved in the displacement rear/near from the well Heavy oil/enriched gas (with sufficient intermediate components)
3
cr iti ca l
tie lin e
O1
O 2
C Gas
Oil
1
System C1/C4/C10 just above MMP
Condensing mechanism
Gas saturation
Methane n-Butane
ln Ki
-1 -2 -3
n-Decane
Density (kg/m )
Liquid
Gas
Dimensionless distance
Condensing mechanism ?
Now it is believed that there is no such mechanism in a real reservoir. Reason: the multicomponent system (reservoir fluid) contains both light intermediate and heavy intermediate. Gas tends to extract heavy intermediate, leaving the oil saturated with light and light intermediates, which are hard to be miscible with the gas. The exchange of components is two-way, both vaporizing/condensing can happen. This leads to the combined mechanism.
Combined mechanism
15 comp. (N2, C1, CO2, C2, C3, iC4, nC4, iC5, nC5, C6 and 5 C7+ comps).
Gas saturation
1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0.0 2 0 -2 -4 -6 -8 1000 800 600 400 200 0 0.0
Liquid Near miscible zone Gas region Gas/oil region Oil region
Density (kg/m )
ln Ki
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Dimensionless distance
Experimental study
Swelling test
Easy to perform
10
Forward contact
Simulate vaporizing process Provide phase and volumetric data for the process Miscibility can be achieved if P>MMP
Gas
Gas1 Oil1
Gas1
Oil
Removed
Oil
Backward contact
Injection gas
Oil1
Oil
Oil1
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Slimtube experiment
Physically simulates gas injection into a 1D reservoir Standard method to determine MMP 1.2 Pore Volume Injection (PVI) at different pressures Recoveries measured Time consuming
Slimtube experiment
Recovery %
Pressure (atm)
12
P U M P
Empirical correlations Limiting tieline method Single cell simulation Slimtube simulation (multicell/cell-to-cell simulation) Global approach by key tieline identification (semianalytical method based on intersecting tie lines)
13
Experimental correlations
Many suggestions found in the literature Expressed, e.g., as functions of pseudo critical properties of gas, specific gravity of gas Easy to use, fast predictions Accurate for reference system Inaccurate for other systems
Negative flash to find the P when the injection tie line or the initial tie line become critical Fast, but without stability analysis only for pure vaporizing Gas /condensing
C2-C6
Initial tie-line
Critical point
Oil
Injection tie-line
C1
C7+
14
Onecell simulation
Initial tie-line
P < MMP
L=
x
i =1
nc
2 i
yi2
Number of contacts
Production
Batch i
t n Fi ,k Fi ,nk 1 z
)
Ci Fi
n = time step k = grid block Overall molar composition Overall molar flux
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The porous medium is homogenous and incompressible Instantaneous thermodynamic equilibrium Small pressure gradient compared to total pressure Capillary forces and gravity are neglected The flow is isothermal and linear Mass transfer by diffusion/dispersion is neglected
Directly simulate slimtube experiment Give correct MMP Time consuming Numerical dispersion if grids are too few
Simulation time proportional to Ngrid2 Extrapolation to infinity Ngrid needed, for example, determine RF(P) by plotting RF(P) vs. 1/sqrt(Ngrid) and extrapolating to zero.
16
Pressure (atm)
17
Fast
Unlike slimtube
Fast, semi-analtyical based on intersecting key tielines Based on the analysis of 1D multicomponent two-phase dispersion free flow using the Method Of Characteristics (MOC)
Ci Fi + =0 t x
i =1,..,nc
18
In the composition space, the analytical solution forms a composition path starting from the injection gas composition to the initial oil composition. The composition path must travel through a sequence of key tielines. For a nc component system, there are nc-1 key tielines, including
The initial tie line and the injection tie line nc-3 crossover tielines
vaporizing and condensing mechanisms are special cases when the initial key tie line and the injection key tie line become critical
The composition path can have discontinuities known as shocks. When the path consists ONLY of shocks (the usual case), the key tie lines will intersect pairwise. For other situations (solution consisting of not only shocks but also rarefactions), intersection of key tielines is a good approximation
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Injection gas Crossover tie line Solution path nc-1 key tie lines
S
0
T,P fixed
CH4
Initial oil
C10
Gas CO2
Jessen et al. (1998)
Oil C10
Tie-line extending through initial Oil
20
x
i =1
nc
yij = 0 , j = 1, nc 1
J +F =0
21
Tie-line Length
Tie-line Length
130
140
150
160
135
150
165
180
195
210
Pressure (atm)
Pressure (atm)
Tie-line length
d=
(x
nc i =1
yi
equals 0 at MMP
22
Comparison of different results from literature. P (atm) *Eclipse simulation, ** Experimental, *** Multicell [1] Zick, 1986; [2] Hier, 1997
450
350
250
150 150
250
350
450
550
23
Monotonic
Non-monotonic
24
Example
1.00 Volume fraction of gas (S) 0.80 0.60 0.40 0.20 0.00 0.00
MOC Num erical (100,450) Num erical (1000, 4500) Num erical (10000, 45000)
0.20
0.40
0.60
0.80
1.00
1.20
1.40
Viscosity instability
Gravity segregation
Reservoir heterogeneity
Channeling
25
Summary
EOR with CO2 provides double benefits in terms of sequestering CO2 and improving oil recovery EOR with CO2 injection is mainly attributed to multicontact miscibility. Three mechanisms for MCM are discussed, only two of them (the vaporizing and the combined) are realistic In experimental study of CO2 injection, swelling test is the easiest one to perform while only the slimtube experiment can correctly determine MMP (also the standard method).
Summary
Many MMP calculation methods are available, but only two (the slimtube simulation and the intersecting tieline method) can capture the correct mechanism. The first one is time consuming and needs extrapolation, while the second one gives quick and correct solution. A useful extension of the intersecting tie line method is the semianalytical solution to 1D two-phase gas injection, which can be further used in streamlined based reservoir simulation MMP (phase equilibrium) only determines local displacement efficiency, sweep efficiency are related to other aspects (viscosity, gravity, rock heterogeneity) which must be taken into consideration.
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