An Experimental Study of Steam-Solvent Coinjection for Bitumen Recovery Using a Large-Scale Physical Model

Sheng, Kai; Okuno, Ryosuke; Imran, Muhammad; Nakutnyy, Petro; Nakagawa, Kyuya

doi:10.3997/2214-4609.202133152

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Higher oil viscosity poses a threat to the swept volume of steam due to higher flow resistance and higher risks of steam channeling. As has been validated by field performance [18,19], the addition of solvent into steam is an effective method to further reduce the oil viscosity and enhance the injected fluid flow mobility, which has been used in ES-SAGD and steam huff-n-puff process [20], in which the liquid addition to steam for enhancing recovery, in other words, the addition of solvent in steam huff-n-puff process is called LASER in petroleum industry [21]. Although the solvent has been used in SAGD preheating phase [22], its application in infilled vertical well-assisted SAGD has not been studied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Infilled Vertical Well LASER-Assisted SAGD

Ding¹,

Guo³

2022

Geofluids

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In the SAGD process with dual horizontal wells in heterogeneous reservoirs, the injection pressure of steam huff-n-puff by infilled interwell vertical wells is too high, and the heat communication between SAGD wellpairs and infilled wells is too long, which leads to a series of problems. The solvent-assisted vertical well stimulation (LASER) technology is proposed to solve the problems above. The solvent formula was optimized, and its key mechanism was studied by viscosity reduction experiments, multicomponent phase behavior experiments at high temperature and high pressure, and scaled two-dimensional physical experiments. The experimental results show that when adding 10% 2# or 3# solvent oil, the viscosity reduction of crude oil can reach 96.65% and 96.73%, respectively. The HTHP visualized phase behavior experiment results show that the mixture of low flash point solvent oil 2# with high flash point solvent oil 3# (volumetric ratio 3 : 2) has excellent high temperature oil solubility stability and is similar to water vapor phase behavior, so it is determined as the ideal formula. The scaled two-dimensional physical experiment results show that the solvent-assisted vertical well huff-n-puff has the key mechanism of reducing injection pressure and porous flow resistance, expanding the sweep region of injected fluid and accelerating thermal communication. The cycle of huff-n-puff was reduced from 6 to 3, which greatly shortened the thermal communication time. From the scaled physical experiments, the oil rate and the oil recovery of SAGD were improved by 19.86% and 6.3%, respectively. Field-scale numerical simulation was performed, and the production performance compared with SAGD and conventional infilled CSS-SAGD was investigated, which shows that by adding solvent into steam stimulation, 6 cycles were reduced, and the incremental oil recovery factor was 27.3% and 13.2%, respectively. The performance of accelerating thermal communication and production improvement by LASER has been validated by 4 SAGD wellpairs in field practice, and its long-term prediction result shows significant potential in similar heterogeneous SAGD reservoirs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Infilled Vertical Well LASER-Assisted SAGD

Ding¹,

Guo³

2022

Geofluids

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Simulation case studies of aqueous formate solution for geological carbon storage

Oyenowo¹,

Sheng²,

Okuno³

2023

Fuel

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A Study of the Impact of Permeability Barriers on Steam-Solvent Coinjection Using a Large-Scale Physical Model

Sheng

Okuno

Al-Gawfi

et al. 2022

SPE Improved Oil Recovery Conference

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This paper presents a solvent-assisted steam-assisted gravity drainage (SA-SAGD) experiment using condensate in a large physical model. The main objective of this research was to study the impact of permeability barriers on the in-situ thermal/compositional flow and the produced bitumen properties in SA-SAGD using condensate. A pressure vessel of 0.425 m in diameter and 1.2 m in length contained unconsolidated sands and two horizontal shale plates as permeability barriers. The two shale plates were placed at different elevations above the injection well and horizontally staggered so that they could make the main hydraulic paths tortuous during the experiment. The sandpack had a porosity of 0.34 and a permeability of 5.6 D, and it was initially saturated with 95% Athabasca bitumen and 5% deionized water. After 24 hours of preheating, SA-SAGD with 2.8 mol% condensate was performed at 35 cm3/min (cold-water equivalent) at 3500 kPa for 4 days. The production, injection, and temperature distribution were recorded. Produced oil samples were analyzed for density and asphaltene content. The sandpack was excavated after the experiment to analyze the oil saturation and asphaltene content in the remaining oil at different locations. Results were compared with the previous SAGD and SA-SAGD experiments using the same physical model with a homogeneous sandpack. Results showed that SA-SAGD was efficient in the presence of permeability barriers with a cumulative steam-to-oil ratio (SOR) that was two to three times smaller than that ofthe homogeneous SAGD case. Temperature data indicated that a steam chamber vertically expanded from the lower part to the upper part through tortuouspaths of lower temperatures.The emerging steam chamber above the shale plates occurred by convective heat from the injection well through lower-temperature hydraulic paths between shale plates. This should have involved light to intermediate solvent components that enabled the steam chamber to expand away from the injection well. This highlights the important role of volatile solvent components in the growth of a steam chamber in SA-SAGD under heterogeneity. The produced bitumen density in this research was closer to the original bitumen than in the homogeneous SA-SAGD case because the bitumen dilution and the solvent retention increased by the tortuous flow regime resulted in efficient drainage of oil at lower temperature.

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An Experimental Study of Steam-Solvent Coinjection for Bitumen Recovery Using a Large-Scale Physical Model

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Infilled Vertical Well LASER-Assisted SAGD

Experimental and Numerical Investigation on Infilled Vertical Well LASER-Assisted SAGD

Simulation case studies of aqueous formate solution for geological carbon storage

A Study of the Impact of Permeability Barriers on Steam-Solvent Coinjection Using a Large-Scale Physical Model

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