High Temperature Naptha to Replace Steam in the SAGD Process

Palmgren, C.; Edmunds, Neil

doi:10.2118/30294-ms

Cited by 23 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 6 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…They concluded that smaller solvent slugs are more effective in bitumen recovery and that there is an optimum combination of solvent and steam slug size. These earlier efforts to improve steamflood process with the use of solvent led some investigators to suggest the combination of thermal effect and solvent dilution in SAGD (9,10) . Gupta et al (11) at EnCana Senlac piloted the solvent-aided process (SAP), where butane was injected with steam.…”

Section: Solvent Enhanced Sagd Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Evaluation of Hydrocarbon Additives to Steam in the SAGD Process

Mohebati

Maini

Harding

2010

Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Summary Heavy oil and bitumen are expected to become increasingly important sources of fuel in the coming decades. Steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is a commercially viable and widely used recovery technique for heavy oil and bitumen. However, it remains an expensive technique and requires large energy input in the form of steam. Energy intensity of SAGD, as well as environmental concerns such as fresh water usage and CO2 emission, make it imperative to find new oil extraction technologies. Coinjecting a hydrocarbon additive with steam offers the potential of higher oil rates and recoveries with lower energy and water consumption. A reservoir simulation study using a 20X12X15 3D Cartesian model and Athabasca fluid and reservoir properties was conducted to evaluate this process. The role of hydrocarbon additive in the steam chamber and its effect on the performance of SAGD was investigated. Simulation results revealed the parameters that will have the greatest impact on the process performance and indicated the effectiveness of each hydrocarbon additive in improving the performance of SAGD. The results also showed that selecting the most suitable hydrocarbon additive depends on the operating conditions as well as the original reservoir fluid composition.

show abstract

Section: Solvent Enhanced Sagd Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Evaluation of Hydrocarbon Additives to Steam in the SAGD Process

Mohebati

Maini

Harding

2010

Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These earlier efforts to improve steam flood process with the use of solvent led some investigators to suggest the combination of thermal effect and solvent dilution in SAGD (Palmgren and Edmunds 1995;Butler and Yee 2000). Gupta et al (Gupta, Gittins et al 2002), at EnCana Senlac, piloted the solvent aided process (SAP), where butane was injected with steam.…”

Section: Solvent Co-injectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimization of Hydrocarbon Additives With Steam in SAGD for Three Major Canadian Oil Sands Deposits

2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Heavy oil and bitumen are expected to become increasingly important sources of fuel in the coming decades. There are extensive deposits in Alberta that could be a principal source of fuel in the coming century. The Athabasca Oil Sands, the largest petroleum accumulation in the world, the Cold Lake oil deposit, and the Lloydminster reservoir are all major Canadian oil sands deposits. SAGD, which has shown considerable promise in all three of these major deposits, remains an expensive technique and requires large energy input. Energy intensity of SAGD and the environmental concerns make it imperative to find new oil extraction technologies.Co-injecting hydrocarbon additives with steam offers the potential of lower energy and water consumption and reduced greenhouse gas emission by improving the oil rates and recoveries. In a previous paper by the same authors (Hosseininejad Mohebati, Maini et al. 2009), it was shown that the selection of a suitable hydrocarbon additive and the effectiveness of this hybrid process are strongly dependent on the operating conditions, reservoir fluid composition, the heavy oil viscosity, and the petrophysical properties of the reservoir. Among these factors, the heavy oil viscosity which is the most prominent difference between these three reservoirs could be a very important parameter in the performance of this hybrid process. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the effect of oil viscosity on solvent assisted SAGD.Extensive numerical studies in a 3D model by means of a fully implicit thermal simulator were conducted to evaluate the efficiency of each hydrocarbon additive in Athabasca, Cold Lake and Lloydminster reservoirs. Varying mole percents of hexane, butane and methane were co-injected with steam in with different values of heavy oil viscosity. The effect of oil viscosity on the performance of each solvent was compared in terms of oil production rate and cumulative steam oil ratio.

show abstract

“…All rates were scaled to represent a horizontal well length of 700 metres. Since the 0.5-metre model took a prohibitively long amount of time to run (over 100 hours) and the 2-metre model gave unacceptable results (1-minute run time) the decision to use 1-metre grid blocks (1-hour run time) was confirmed (7) .…”

Section: Grid Block Size Sensitivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Preliminary Numerical Analysis for a Naptha Co-Injection Test During SAGD

Boak¹,

Palmgren²

2004

Canadian International Petroleum Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

and IntroductionSteam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) is a steam-flood process that relies on thermal diffusion and gravity to mobilise bitumen in oil sands reservoirs and allow for recovery. A pair of parallel horizontal wells are drilled near the bottom of the pay zone with approximately 5m vertical separation between them. After an initial circulation phase to establish communication, high quality steam is continuously injected down the injection well while the heated bitumen and condensate flow, due to gravity, to the production well. The volume of low oil saturation left behind is filled with steam and referred to as the steam chamber. The steam chamber grows vertically until it hits the cap-rock at which point it grows laterally away from the horizontal wells (1) .A major cost of producing bitumen by SAGD is the energy required to produce steam; thus there is a great drive to improve the energy efficiency of a SAGD project. Solvent addition is expected to increase oil production and improve the energy efficiency of SAGD by combining the thermal process with the diluent mechanism of a solvent (2) . A solvent is added to the steam chamber by injecting the solvent-steam mixture continuously from the injector well (3) .Reservoir simulations of solvent-steam co-injection were done with a pseudo-compositional thermal reservoir simulator. The effects of co-injecting a multi-component solvent, naphtha, and a single component solvent, propane or pentane, were compared to SAGD. Three pseudo-components were used to model the multi-component behaviour of naphtha.Co-injection of any of the solvents studied (propane, pentane, naphtha) resulted in an improved SOR. The greater the mole ratio of solvent to steam the greater the improvement in SOR. Only naphtha co-injection resulted in an improved oil production rate. All components of naphtha travelled freely in the vapour chamber and accumulated along the vapour chamber front in both the vapour and oil phases. At higher solvent to steam ratios oil production rate decreased due to an accumulation of solvent gas at the vapour chamber front.

show abstract

High Temperature Naptha to Replace Steam in the SAGD Process

Cited by 23 publications

References 6 publications

Numerical Evaluation of Hydrocarbon Additives to Steam in the SAGD Process

Numerical Evaluation of Hydrocarbon Additives to Steam in the SAGD Process

Optimization of Hydrocarbon Additives With Steam in SAGD for Three Major Canadian Oil Sands Deposits

Preliminary Numerical Analysis for a Naptha Co-Injection Test During SAGD

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About