Recent developments in numerical simulation techniques of thermal recovery processes

Tamim, M.; Abou‐Kassem, Jamal H.; Ali, S.M. Farouq

doi:10.1016/s0920-4105(00)00042-5

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 29 publications

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“…A variety of numerical models have been developed for simulation of nonisothermal multiphase flow and transport with interphase partitioning for environmental applications (Class et al 2002;Falta et al 1992;Pruess 1991) and for petroleum reservoir simulation (Coats et al 1974;Rubin and Buchanan 1985;Tamim et al 2000). In the current study, the compositional simulator, CompSim (McClure and Sleep 1996;O'Carroll and Sleep 2007;Sehayek et al 1999;Sleep 1998;Sleep and Sykes 1993a,b;Sleep et al 2000a,b) was used to simulate hot water flooding of viscous NAPLs.…”

Section: Numerical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of NAPL Thermal Properties in the Effectiveness of Hot Water Flooding

O'Carroll

Sleep

2009

Transp Porous Med

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Hot water flooding is a thermal nonaqueous phase liquid (NAPL) recovery technology originally developed in the petroleum industry that has recently been proposed for enhanced recovery of NAPLs in the contaminated subsurface. This technology, however, has received relatively little laboratory or numerical modeling investigation in the contaminant hydrology community. In this study the utility of flooding NAPL contaminated source zones at elevated water temperatures was investigated. Simulations were conducted using 16 different geostatistical representations of an actual field site. Two NAPLs were selected for this study-a light NAPL with hydraulic properties that have moderate temperature dependencies and a dense NAPL with significant viscosity temperature dependency. For these two NAPLs, flooding the source zone with water at elevated temperatures resulted in enhanced NAPL recovery. However, injection of hot water also resulted in accelerated downward movement of coal tar DNAPL due to the reduced viscosity at elevated temperatures. NAPL recovery was also dependent on the source zone architecture with greater NAPL mass recovery when the NAPL was localized in a small volume at high saturations. These results suggest that hot water flooding can significantly speed up the recovery of viscous NAPLs and, as such, is a powerful technique for the remediation of viscous NAPLs.

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Section: Numerical Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of NAPL Thermal Properties in the Effectiveness of Hot Water Flooding

O'Carroll

Sleep

2009

Transp Porous Med

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Steam condensation waves in water-saturated porous rock

Bruining¹,

Schecter

Marchesin

2004

Qual. Th. Dyn. Syst

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Semi-analytical model to predict the performance of cyclic steam stimulation oil wells

Basta¹,

Ela

El-Banbi

et al. 2021

J Petrol Explor Prod Technol

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Prediction of the performance of oil wells under Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS) is challenging in complex and heterogeneous reservoirs, especially with limited data. Analytical and numerical simulation models do not usually give accurate predictions in such conditions. In this work, a semi-analytical model was developed to determine consistent mathematical relationships between the injected steam and some of the effective oil production parameters for more accurate prediction of oil production rates. Field investigation indicates that the change of the Cumulative Oil to Steam Ratio (COSR) to production days is related to a group of effective oil production parameters. This group of parameters includes the cumulative injected steam relative to the drainage volume, the oil net pay thickness relative to the gross pay thickness, and the vertical permeability relative to the thermal diffusivity. These parameters were arranged in two dimensionless groups. It was found that plotting these two dimensionless groups on Log–Log scale for any reservoir yields a straight line (correlation). For any reservoir under CSS, measurements of two steam cycles are sufficient to identify the constants of the proposed correlation. This method has been applied and validated on six reservoirs with different reservoir characterizations. Six different wells with a total of 43 steam cycles from these reservoirs were analyzed with the same approach. The mathematical relationships of the dimensionless groups were calculated, and the Log–Log plot was constructed for each well using the data of the first two cycles. Then, the proposed correlation was developed for each well and used to predict the well performance starting from the third steam cycle. At the end, the predicted performance of each well was compared with the corresponding actual measurements. The results showed that the average absolute percentage deviation between the actual and the predicted cumulative oil production through the well lifetime is less than 5% for the six wells. In addition, the absolute instantaneous deviation between the actual and the predicted cumulative oil production for each individual cycle in all cases is (1) less than 15% for about 42% of the tested CSS cycles, (2) between 15 to 25% for about 39% of the tested CSS cycles, and (3) higher than 25% for about 19% of the tested CSS cycles. This work is considered an original contribution to develop dimensionless relationships that can be used to predict the oil production of the CSS operations for reservoirs with limited data. The required data are the historical production rate, steam injection rate, and basic petrophysical parameters.

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Recent developments in numerical simulation techniques of thermal recovery processes

Cited by 4 publications

References 29 publications

Role of NAPL Thermal Properties in the Effectiveness of Hot Water Flooding

Role of NAPL Thermal Properties in the Effectiveness of Hot Water Flooding

Steam condensation waves in water-saturated porous rock

Semi-analytical model to predict the performance of cyclic steam stimulation oil wells

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