TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractThis paper reviews the twenty years of steam injection in heavy oil fields of Alto do Rodrigues area. The review includes the beginning, consolidation and expansion of this enhanced recovery method. Main topics involve project management of cycled injection and steam drive along with steady improvements on the quality control of the whole steam generation process. At the end, this work shows the positive impacts on the recovery factor and environmental issues.

This work describes the development of a hydrodynamic and heat transfer mechanistic model for steam flow in a steam injection process. The problem of two-phase steam flow in pipelines and wellbores has been solved recently by using available empirical correlations from the petroleum and nuclear industry by Lopes (1986) and Moura (1991). Despite the good performance achieved by the empirical approach, mechanistic models developed by Ansari (1994), Hasan (1995), Gomez (2000) and Kaya (2001) supports the importance of using the mechanistic approach for the steam flow problem in injection systems. In this study, the methodology to solve the problem consists in the application of a numerical method to the governing equations of steam flow. A marching algorithm is used to determine the distribution of pressure and temperature along the pipelines and wellbores. A computer code has been formulated to get numerical results. These results are compared to results of the main models found in the literature. Finally, when compared to available field data, the mechanistic model for steam flow gives better results than empirical correlations.

TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractThis paper reviews the twenty years of steam injection in heavy oil fields of Alto do Rodrigues area. The review includes the beginning, consolidation and expansion of this enhanced recovery method. Main topics involve project management of cycled injection and steam drive along with steady improvements on the quality control of the whole steam generation process. At the end, this work shows the positive impacts on the recovery factor and environmental issues.