Simulation of the foamy oil flow during the solution gas drive production of heavy oils – Year two

Foamy oil behavior is a unique phenomenon associated with cold production of heavy crude oils. It is believed that the foaming mechanism has a significant impact on the abnormally high production rate of viscous crude oils observed in many heavy oil producing reservoirs through solution gas drive.
Due to the non-equilibrium nature of the foamy oil flow, the mathematical modeling of this process involves few challenges. The main non-equilibrium process exist between solution gas and free gas that leads to a significant supersaturation of dissolved gas in the oil phase. Even though different models on foamy-oil behavior with a diverse experimental data are available in literature, there is scarcity of published experimental data for a heavy oil reservoir with a Canadian origin. This research will be focused on developing a kinetic model which is developed and tuned for a heavy oil reservoir with a Canadian origin.TO BE CONT’D

Faculty Supervisor:

Sudarshan (Raj) Mehta

Student:

Jafar Modaresghazani

Partner:

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.

Discipline:

Engineering - chemical / biological

Sector:

Mining and quarrying

University:

University of Calgary