High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report (open access)

High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report

This report outlines progress in the second 3 months of the first year of the DOE project ''High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs.'' The development of an automatic technique for analytical solution of one-dimensional gas flow problems with volume change on mixing is described. The aim of this work is to develop a set of ultra-fast compositional simulation tools that can be used to make field-scale predictions of the performance of gas injection processes. To achieve the necessary accuracy, these tools must satisfy the fundamental physics and chemistry of the displacement from the pore to the reservoir scales. Thus this project focuses on four main research areas: (1) determination of the most appropriate methods of mapping multicomponent solutions to streamlines and streamtubes in 3D; (2) development of techniques for automatic generation of analytical solutions for one-dimensional flow along a streamline; (3) experimental investigations to improve the representation of physical mechanisms that govern displacement efficiency along a streamline; and (4) theoretical and experimental investigations to establish the limitations of the streamline/streamtube approach. In this report they briefly review the status of the research effort in each area. They then give a more in depth discussion of …
Date: March 31, 2001
Creator: Orr, Franklin M., Jr.
System: The UNT Digital Library
High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report (open access)

High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report

This report outlines progress in the second quarter of the third year of the DOE project ''High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs''. This report presents results of an investigation of the effects of variation in interfacial tension (IFT) on three-phase relative permeability. We report experimental results that demonstrate the effect of low IFT between two of three phases on the three-phase relative permeabilities. In order to create three-phase systems, in which IFT can be controlled systematically, we employed analog liquids composing of hexadecane, n-butanol, isopropanol, and water. Phase composition, phase density and viscosity, and IFT of three-phase system were measured and are reported here. We present three-phase relative permeabilities determined from recovery and pressure drop data using the Johnson-Bossler-Naumann (JBN) method. The phase saturations were obtained from recovery data by the Welge method. The experimental results indicate that the wetting phase relative permeability was not affected by IFT variation whereas the other two-phase relative permeabilities were clearly affected. As IFT decreases the ''oil'' and ''gas'' phases become more mobile at the same phase saturations.
Date: March 31, 2003
Creator: Franklin M. Orr, Jr.
System: The UNT Digital Library
High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report (open access)

High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report

Gas injection in oil reservoirs offers huge potential for improved oil recovery. However, successful design of a gas injection process requires a detailed understanding of a variety of different significant processes, including the phase behavior of multicomponent mixtures and the approach to multi-contact miscibility in the reservoir, the flow of oil, water and gas underground, and the interaction of phase behavior reservoir heterogeneity and gravity on overall performance at the field scale. This project attempts to tackle all these issues using a combination of theoretical, numerical and laboratory studies of gas injection. The aim of this work is to develop a set of ultra-fast compositional simulation tools that can be used to make field-scale predictions of the performance of gas injection processes. To achieve the necessary accuracy, these tools must satisfy the fundamental physics and chemistry of the displacement from the pore to the reservoir scales. Thus this project focuses on four main research areas: (1) determination of the most appropriate methods of mapping multicomponent solutions to streamlines and streamtubes in 3D; (2) development of techniques for automatic generation of analytical solutions for one-dimensional flow along a streamline; (3) experimental investigations to improve the representation of physical mechanisms that govern …
Date: December 31, 2000
Creator: Hewett, Thomas A. & Orr, Franklin M., Jr.
System: The UNT Digital Library
High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report (open access)

High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report

This report outlines progress in the first quarter of the second year of the DOE project ''High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs''. The application of the analytical theory for gas injection processes, including the effects of volume change on mixing, has up to now been limited to fully self-sharpening systems, systems where all solution segments that connect the key tie lines present in the displacement are shock fronts. In the following report, we describe the extension of the analytical theory to include systems with rarefactions (continuous composition and saturation variations) between key tie lines. With the completion of this analysis, a completely general procedure has been developed for finding solutions for problems in which a multicomponent gas displaces a multicomponent oil.
Date: December 31, 2001
Creator: Orr, Franklin M., Jr.
System: The UNT Digital Library
High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report (open access)

High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report

In this report we present an approach for accurate and consistent implementation of gravity effects in compositional streamline simulation. The approach is based on an operator-splitting technique, successfully applied in streamline simulation of black-oil models. The method is demonstrated to conserve mass. Its application adds only marginally to the overall CPU requirement. We provide a detailed description of the approach to incorporate gravity effects and demonstrate the efficiency of compositional streamline simulation, even for cases where gravity segregation plays an important role in the overall process performance. The new approach is demonstrated to be in excellent agreement with commercial FD simulators for prediction of flows in 2D vertical and multi-well 3D geometries. Finally, we outline the work required to extend the compositional streamline approach to handle three-phase flow modeling, also including gravity.
Date: December 31, 2003
Creator: Orr, Franklin M., Jr.
System: The UNT Digital Library
High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report (open access)

High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report

This report outlines progress in the first quarter of the third year of the DOE project ''High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs''. In this report we present an application of compositional streamline simulation in modeling enhanced condensate recovery via gas injection. These processes are inherently compositional and detailed compositional fluid descriptions must be use to represent the flow behavior accurately. Compositional streamline simulation results are compared to those of conventional finite-difference (FD) simulation for evaluation of gas injection schemes in condensate reservoirs. We present and compare streamline and FD results for two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) examples, to show that the compositional streamline method is a way to obtain efficiently estimates of reasonable accuracy for condensate recovery by gas injection.
Date: December 31, 2002
Creator: Franklin M. Orr, Jr.
System: The UNT Digital Library
High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report (open access)

High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs Quarterly Report

This report outlines progress in the second quarter of the second year of the DOE project ''High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs''. A three-dimensional streamline simulator, developed at Stanford University, has been modified in order to use analytical one-dimensional dispersion-free solutions to multicomponent gas injection processes. The use of analytical one-dimensional solutions in combination with streamline simulation is demonstrated to speedup compositional simulations of miscible gas injection processes by orders of magnitude compared to a conventional finite difference simulator. Two-dimensional and three-dimensional examples are reported to demonstrate the potential of this technology. Finally, the assumptions of the approach and possible extensions to include the effects of gravity are discussed.
Date: March 31, 2002
Creator: Orr, Franklin M., Jr.
System: The UNT Digital Library