Steamflood Performance In the Presence of Carbon Dioxide And Nitrogen

Abstract

The injection of mixtures of flue gas and steam has been pro-posed in conjunction with the development ofdownhole steam generators, the Vapor Therm process and the Wet Air Oxida-tion Boiler. The combined gas-steam injection process may be superior to steam-only injection in terms of improved oil pro-duction performance and reduced levels atmospheric pollu-tion. This paper reviews previous experimental and numerical simulation work related to gas-steam injection and presents the results of an experimental study of steam-flooding with nitrogen and carbon dioxide additives. The experiments were condtuctedin linear porous media which were saturated with a T.G. Harding Thomaas G. Harding is currently a graduate student in petroleum engineer-ing at the University of Alberta. Previously, he worked for B. P Explora-tion Canada Limited as a reservoir engineer in the Oil Sands Department. fvlr. Harding holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees iii cheniical engineering, both from the University Of Calgary. His research interests include oil sands technology, thermal recovery methods and numerical simulation. * now with BP Exploration Canada Limited S.M. Farouq Ali S.M. Farouq Ali is a professor of petroleum engineering at the Universi-ty of Alberta, where he has been since 1979. Previously, he was with the Pennsylvania State University. He holds a BS degree in electrical engineering from Karachi University, a BS in petroleum engineering ftom igham University, and MS and PhD degrees in petroleum and natural gas engineering from Pennsylvania State University. moderately viscous refined oil and water. Several tests involved in the injection of slugs of gas followed by steam but the majority used the simultaneous injection of the gases and steam. It was found that for the systems studied, the addition of the gases to steam resulted in a slight improvement in over-all recovery but a marked improvement in the rate of production of oil. Donald L. Flock After serving for a short period as a research engineer and project leader with Cities Service Research & Develop-ment Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Donald Flock joined the staff at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in 1957. As a professor of petroleum engineering, he carried out fundamental researchch in the specialized areas of secondary recovery in-cluding miscible fluid displacement and thermal methods of oil recovery.

Transport and Phase Equilibria Properities for Steam Flooding of Heavy Oils

“…Harding et al, [1], among others). Phase behavior data have been obtained traditionally by experimental testing or by use of generalized correlations.…”

“…These methods are the most important thermal/miscible oil recovery processes (Wu, 1977 [5]; Harding et al;1983 [1]; Turek et al, 1984 [2], Boberg, 1988 [5]). Steam and/or CO 2 are injected into reservoirs where hydrocarbons and brines coexist.…”

“…Highlighting the importance of phase behavior, researchers ( [1], and [2]) insist on obtaining truly representative reservoir fluids samples for experimental analysis. The prevailing sampling techniques used for compositional analysis of the fluids have potential for a large source of error.…”

An Investigation on the Effects of the Reservoir Variables and Operational Parameters on Steam-Propane Injection Performance

“…Further recovery was reached when naphtha was added. Harding et al (1983) presented both experimental and simulation results suggesting that the coinjection of carbon dioxide or flue gas with steam yielded higher recoveries when compared to pure steam injection. Stone and Malcolm (1985) performed several tests to study the benefit of injecting carbon dioxide along with steam.…”

Production Acceleration and Injectivity Enhancement Using Steam-Propane Injection for Hamaca Extra-Heavy Oil

“…Naphtha increased recovery even further. Harding et al (2) showed that the co-injection of CO 2 or flue gas with steam yielded higher recoveries than pure steam injection.…”