Work

Study on Thermal Chamber Expansion of VH-SAGD Process Using CO2-Inducing Effect for Heavy Oil Reservoirs

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: In heavy oil thermal recovery processes, higher pressure usually leads to low dryness and expansion difficulty for the injected steam in thermal recovery processes, which will result in lower oil recovery and more carbon emissions. This paper proposed a new CO2-inducing method to accelerate the steam chamber expansion, based on a core flooding experiment and numerical simulation. First, the CO2 showed significant viscosity reduction at high pressure in the PVT test. In the core flooding experiment, the CO2 provided strong flow conductivity in porous media for the thermal flooding, as the CO2 pre-injection restrained the steam condensation. Using the CO2-inducing method, CO2 pre-injection before steam built a fast flow channel in a relatively higher permeability layer and reduced the thermal injection pressure by about 1.0~2.4 MPa. As a result, the steam overlap around the injection wells became slower and the gravity drainage process was able to heat and displace the heavy oil above the channel. Furthermore, the CO2 gas trapped at the top reduced heat loss by about 12.4%. The field numerical simulation showed that this new method improved thermal recovery by 7.5% and reduced CO2 emissions by about 18 million kg/unit for the whole process. This method changes the conventional thermal expansion direction by CO2 inducing effect and fundamentally reduces heat loss, which provides significant advantages in low-carbon EOR.

Source: Processes

DOI: 10.3390/pr12102260

Authors: Haojun Xie, Shiming Zhang, Guanghuan Wu, Wei Li

Institution: Sinopec (China)

Language: English

Topic: Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques

Subfield: Ocean Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Climate action, Industry, innovation and infrastructure, Affordable and clean energy

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,728