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fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractMost of heavy and extra heavy crude oil reservoirs in Venezuela are non-consolidated sand deposits. Venezuelan oil industry has a great interest to produce these reserves. Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS) is an alternative for the primary production of some of these deposits; in particular those where other technologies are not applicable (i.e. sands with thicknesses are less than 10 m). In general, at field level, the application of the CHOPS has been successful around the world. In particular, it has experienced great development in Canada, China and United States. The physical and numerical studies show that change in the production rates, implies cavities formation and/or erosion zones near to the well that increase reservoir permeability. In Venezuela, experience in this technology does not exist. Furthermore, the bibliographical review demonstrates that many doubts still exist on the production mechanisms. It is the reason why this work considers the design, construction and evaluation of a sand production physical model. The main objective is to study the physical processes and to evaluate the influence of different variables like pressure, flow rate, among others, in the sand production mechanisms. The obtained data, will allow the development of models to predict reservoir behavior and its properties evolution in time. This physical model is set up with a cylindrical disc, 50 cm diameter and 20 cm thickness. Cylindrical geometry guarantees radial flow. The model is instrumented with sensors to measure pressures (injection, production and pores fluid) and fluid samples are taken to quantify total sand produced. The assembly system provides facilities to apply vertical stress. Ultrasonic wave velocity measurement is used to locate erosion zones. All data is collected by a Labview card and it is processed digitally in the computer in real time. This work shows results for a preliminary test with water and mineral oil used as fluids and calibrated glass bets as the porous media. The results prove that this system can be used to study sand production mechanism but it cannot be scale up to reservoir conditions. However the results will be used to validate numerical models.

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