This report outlines progress in the third 3 quarter of the first year of the DOE project ''High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs.'' A simple theoretical formulation of vertical flow with capillary/gravity equilibrium is described. Also reported are results of experimental measurements for the same systems. The results reported indicate that displacement behavior is strongly affected by the interfacial tension of phases that form on the tie line that extends through the initial oil composition.

This report presents a detailed analysis of the development of miscibility during gas cycling in condensates and the formation of condensate banks at the leading edge of the displacement front. Dispersion-free, semi-analytical one-dimensional (1D) calculations are presented for enhanced condensate recovery by gas injection. The semi-analytical approach allows investigation of the possible formation of condensate banks (often at saturations that exceed the residual liquid saturation) and also allows fast screening of optimal injection gas compositions. We describe construction of the semi-analytical solutions, a process which differs in some ways from related displacements for oil systems. We use an analysis of key equilibrium tie lines that are part of the displacement composition path to demonstrate that the mechanism controlling the development of miscibility in gas condensates may vary from first-contact miscible drives to pure vaporizing and combined vaporizing/condensing drives. Depending on the compositions of the condensate and the injected gas, multicontact miscibility can develop at the dew point pressure, or below the dew point pressure of the reservoir fluid mixture. Finally, we discuss the possible impact on performance prediction of the formation of a mobile condensate bank at the displacement front in near-miscible gas cycling/injection schemes.

This report outlines progress in the third quarter of the second year of the DOE project ''High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs''. High order finite difference schemes for one-dimensional, two-phase, multicomponent displacements are investigated. Numerical tests are run using a three component fluid description for a case when the interaction between phase behavior and flow is strong. Some currently used total variation diminishing (TVD) methods produce unstable results. A third order essentially non-oscillatory (ENO) method captures the effects of phase behavior for this test case. Possible modifications to ensure stability are discussed along with plans to incorporate higher order schemes into the 3DSL streamline simulator.

This report outlines progress in the first quarter of the extension of the DOE project ''High Resolution Prediction of Gas Injection Process Performance for Heterogeneous Reservoirs''. This report presents experimental results that demonstrate combined scaling effects of viscous, capillary, and gravity crossflow mechanisms that apply to the situations in which streamline models are used. We designed and ran a series of experiments to investigate combined effects of capillary, viscous, and gravity forces on displacement efficiency in layered systems. Analog liquids (isooctane, isopropanol, and water) were employed to control scaling parameters by changing interfacial tension (IFT), flow rate, and density difference. The porous medium was a two-dimensional (2-D) 2-layered glass bead model with a permeability ratio of about 1:4. In order to analyze the combined effect of only capillary and viscous forces, gravity effects were eliminated by changing the orientation of the glass bead model. We employed a commercial simulator, Eclipse100 to calculate displacement behavior for comparison with the experimental data. Experimental results with minimized gravity effects show that the IFT and flow rate determine how capillary and viscous forces affect behavior of displacement. The limiting behavior for scaling groups for two-phase displacement was verified by experimental results. Analysis of the …