New Experimental Method for Measuring Gas Diffusivity in Heavy Oil by the Dynamic Pendant Drop Volume Analysis (DPDVA)

Abstract

This paper presents a new experimental method and its computational scheme for measuring gas diffusivity in heavy oil at high pressures and elevated temperatures by the dynamic pendant drop volume analysis (DPDVA). In the experiment, a see-through windowed high-pressure cell is first filled with a test gas at a prespecified pressure and temperature. Then, a heavy oil sample is introduced by using a syringe pump to form a pendant drop inside the pressure cell. Due to the oil swelling effect, the subsequent dissolution of the gas into the pendant oil drop causes its volume to increase until the saturation state is reached. The sequential digital images of the dynamic pendant oil drop are acquired and analyzed by applying computer-aided image acquisition and processing techniques to measure the oil drop volumes at different times. A mass-transfer model is developed theoretically to describe the diffusion process of the gas into the pendant heavy oil drop. This model is numerically solved by applying the semidiscrete Galerkin finite element method. The volume of the dynamic pendant oil drop is calculated from the numerically predicted transient gas concentration distribution inside the pendant oil drop. The gas diffusivity in heavy oil and the swelling factor of gas-saturated heavy oil are, thus, determined by finding the best fit of the theoretically calculated volumes of the dynamic pendant oil drop to the experimentally measured data. This novel experimental technique is applied to measure CO 2 diffusivities in a heavy oil sample and the swelling factors of a CO 2 -saturated heavy oil at P ) 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 MPa and T ) 23.9 °C.

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