Foamy Oil Direct Visualization during Solvent Injection Processes

This project is aimed for an accurate and highly convenient methodology to visually investigate the multiphase flow behavior, foamy oil stability and solvent mass transfer in solvent injection processes. Therefore, a novel real-time direct visualization methodology, focusing on the study of foamy oil equilibrium and non-equilibrium PVT phase behavior and stability in bulk and porous media, solvent mass transfer efficacy etc, by utilizing the newly designed Hele-Shaw-like 2D high pressure visual cell, has been developed to significantly overcome the inevitable shortcomings of the invisibility of traditional apparatuses such as a hardly-visual 3D PVT cylindrical cell or a non-visual transfer cylinders. With the aid of professional image processing, the experimental results could be vividly seen and quantified. By incorporating micromodel technique, specified pore patterns could be built and a pore-scale characterization of solvent-heavy oil system under multiple operation schemes could be easily fulfilled. Real-time measurement of mixture gaseous solvent fractions in the gas-heavy oil system in every test would be achieved.

Faculty Supervisor:

Farshid Torabi

Student:

Hongyang Wang

Partner:

Petroleum Technology Research Centre

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Oil and gas

University:

Program: