Unconventional Resources: Cracking the Hydrocarbon Molecules In Situ

Karanikas, John M.

doi:10.2118/0512-0068-jpt

Cited by 10 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Also for these simulations the pseudocomponent list was expanded to include replicates of those representing the three heaviest boiling ranges (LO, HO, resid -see Karanikas, 2012), enabling us to differentiate between native bitumen and pyro-bitumen in the in-situ and produced flowstreams. For the low-porosity example, the "low" relative permeabilities were used, and "medium-low" for the high-porosity example.…”

Section: Reservoir Simulation Model For Icpmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evolution of Porosity, Permeability, and Fluid Saturations During Thermal Conversion of Oil Shale

Kibodeaux

2014

SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition

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The In-situ Conversion Process, called ICP, is a thermal recovery process that was developed to produce oil and gas from kerogen-bearing oil shale. In-situ conductive heating of the oil-shale reservoir converts its kerogen (hydrogen-rich solids) into oil and gas (fluids) plus coke (hydrogen-deficient solids).While coke is left behind on the rock, hot vapor and heavy oil flow through the thermally altered oil shale to producer wells, and predicting ICP recovery performance depends on having an accurate characterization of the flow and storage behavior of the oil shale. However the rock fabric changes radically during ICP -the rock's porosity and permeability change with time in a complex way. While changing pore geometry (and pore-wall composition) also results in changing relative-permeability (k r ) and capillary-pressure (P c ) curves, this work focuses on the evolution of oil and gas saturations (which dictate how k r 's and P c 's influence ICP performance), as well as the change in porosity and its resulting alteration of oil-shale permeability.Numerous pyrolysis experiments were performed in the laboratory, where crushed oil shale was heated and effluents were monitored. Furthermore, through a series of otherwise identical experiments that were stopped at different degrees of conversion, changes in the oil-shale solids were determined by analyzing the spent rock. Through these experiments, a reservoir simulation model was developed that, for a variety of oil shales and time scales, captures the chemical-reaction kinetics for the solids and fluids, and the phase behavior of the fluids. Sensitivity studies with this model identified the changing oil-shale fluid-transport properties as a key driver for ICP performance.In this work, the ICP simulation model is used to illustrate ICP reservoir physics for different oil shales. Simulations reveal how changing in-situ fluid compositions (due to chemical reactions, temperature increase, etc.) not only result in changing fluid properties, but also complex behavior with time for oil and gas saturations, and this saturation history governs in part the flow of oil and vapor to producers and thus ICP performance. The early time following kerogen conversion is a period of higher oil saturation and thus higher oil mobility, illustrating how ICP production can include the flow of both vapor and heavy oil to producer wells.Another key to ICP success is the permeability history that results from the evolving porosity. As kerogen converts to fluids, porosity first increases (owing to reactive grain loss), then decreases (from the deposition of coke). While porosity behavior was determined from grain volumes measured in crushed-rock experiments, some complementary tests on pyrolyzed intact rock reveal increasing oil-shale permeability during ICP, which enables production from rock whose original permeability is quite low. Also simulations show that 90% of the pattern pyrolyzes after there are already permeable pathways developed connecting the pyrolyzing regions to the produce...

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Section: Reservoir Simulation Model For Icpmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Much of the world's oil shale is too deep to extract by mining (Karanikas, 2012), and since this form of petroleum is a solid, it cannot be produced using conventional reservoir-engineering processes, i.e. it will not flow to a production well.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of Porosity, Permeability, and Fluid Saturations During Thermal Conversion of Oil Shale

Kibodeaux

2014

SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition

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“…The process starts with drilling heater wells, to supply thermal energy to the reservoir ( Fig. 1) (Karanikas 2012). The energy is transported into the cold reservoir by thermal conduction.…”

Section: Physics Of the In-situ Upgrading Processmentioning

confidence: 99%

Techniques for Effective Simulation, Optimization, and Uncertainty Quantification of the In-situ Upgrading Process

Alpak

Vink

Gao

et al. 2013

SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium

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Strongly temperature-dependent compositional flow and transport, chemical reactions, delivery of energy into the subsurface through downhole heaters, and complex natural fracture architecture render the dynamic modeling of In-situ Upgrading Process (IUP) a computationally challenging endeavor for carbonate extra-heavy oil resources. Economic performance indicators for such recovery methods can be considerably enhanced via simulation or simulation-based proxy models within an optimization framework (e.g., maximizing Net Present Value through achieving an optimal compromise between hydrocarbon recovery and the number of heater wells). The IUP is endowed with uncertain subsurface parameters as in the case of other recovery mechanisms. The number of subsurface uncertainties is especially large and the impacts of these uncertainties are intricate when IUP is applied to a complex naturally-fractured carbonate reservoir. Simulation results must reflect the impacts of these uncertainties; hence they should always deliver "expected-value production functions" and their attached uncertainty ranges, in short, the "error bars". Both the optimization and the uncertainty quantification workflows require (typically multiple) multi-scenario simulations, and are therefore very compute intensive.We describe our recent developments in simulation techniques, optimization algorithms, tool capabilities, and highperformance computing protocols that in unison form a massively parallel simulation/optimization/uncertainty-quantification workflow, in which it is almost equally easy to produce recovery time-functions with an attached uncertainty range, as it is to run a single simulation. Uncertainties are integral part of the simulation models in our dynamic modeling workflow. Our inhouse simulation platform supports various optimization and uncertainty quantification methods, such as conventional as well as robust optimization using a novel Simultaneous Perturbation and Multivariate Interpolation technique, Experimental Design, and Monte Carlo simulation, that can be linked together through a unified script-based interface, to carry out optimization in the presence of subsurface uncertainties and to quantify the impact of these uncertainties on simulation results. Application of our massively parallel dynamic modeling workflow is illustrated on a proprietary IUP recovery method for a complex naturally fractured extra-heavy oil (bitumen) reservoir as example. After briefly explaining these recovery processes and the modeling approach, we show the techniques (including their accompanying application results) that (1) notably accelerate the (single-model) simulation process, (2) effectively identify the predominant subsurface uncertainties, (3) rapidly optimize heater-producer patterns under the influence of predominant subsurface uncertainties, and (4) efficiently compute expected-value production functions with error bars.

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“…Our research here is motivated by a similar problem facing the petroleum industry in extracting unconventional hydrocarbons such as heavy oil. 30 In spite of its immense resource, only 15% percent of yearly oil production is from heavy oil due to its notoriously high viscosity. Conventional water flooding fails because less viscous water can easily find pathways to flow through a reservoir (i.e., the fingering effect) and leave pockets of oil behind.…”

Section: ■ Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although most studies focused primarily on the adsorption of particles at oil–water interfaces, in many applications it is also important to transfer species such as molecules and nanoparticles across the interface. − For example, drug-carrying vehicles that can enter various types of biological barriers from plasma can revolutionize modern diagnostic and therapeutic technologies. Our research here is motivated by a similar problem facing the petroleum industry in extracting unconventional hydrocarbons such as heavy oil . In spite of its immense resource, only 15% percent of yearly oil production is from heavy oil due to its notoriously high viscosity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bicompartmental Phase Transfer Vehicles Based on Colloidal Dimers

Wang

2014

ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces

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Colloidal particles have been used extensively for stabilizing oil-water interfaces in petroleum, food, and cosmetics industries. They have also demonstrated promising potential in the encapsulation and delivery of drugs. Our work is motivated by challenging applications that require protecting and transporting active agents across the water-oil interfaces, such as delivering catalysts to underground oil phase through water flooding for in situ cracking of crude oil. In this Research Article, we successfully design, synthesize, and test a unique type of bicompartmental targeting vehicle that encapsulates catalytic molecules, finds and accumulates at oil-water interface, releases the catalysts toward the oil phase, and performs hydrogenation reaction of unsaturated oil. This vehicle is based on colloidal dimers that possess structural anisotropy between two compartments. We encapsulate active species, such as fluorescent dye and catalytic molecules in one lobe which consists of un-cross-linked polymers, while the other polymeric lobe is highly cross-linked. Although dimers are dispersible in water initially, the un-cross-linked lobe swells significantly upon contact with a trace amount of oil in aqueous phase. The dimers then become amphiphilic, migrate toward, and accumulate at the oil-water interface. As the un-cross-linked lobe swells and eventually dissolves in oil, the encapsulated catalysts are fully released. We also show that hydrogenation of unsaturated oil can be performed subsequently with high conversion efficiency. By further creating the interfacial anisotropy on the dimers, we can reduce the catalyst release time from hundred hours to 30 min. Our work demonstrates a new concept in making colloidal emulsifiers and phase-transfer vehicles that are important for encapsulation and sequential release of small molecules across two different phases.

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Unconventional Resources: Cracking the Hydrocarbon Molecules In Situ

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Evolution of Porosity, Permeability, and Fluid Saturations During Thermal Conversion of Oil Shale

Evolution of Porosity, Permeability, and Fluid Saturations During Thermal Conversion of Oil Shale

Techniques for Effective Simulation, Optimization, and Uncertainty Quantification of the In-situ Upgrading Process

Bicompartmental Phase Transfer Vehicles Based on Colloidal Dimers

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