Low salinity (LS) water flooding is a promising EOR method which has been examined by many experimental studies and field pilots for a variety of reservoirs and oils. This paper investigates applying LS flooding to a heavy oil. Increasing the LS water temperature improves heavy oil recovery by achieving higher sweep efficiency and improving oil mobility by lowering its viscosity. Steam flooding projects have reported many problems such as steam gravity override, but override can be lessened if the steam is is alternated with hot LS water. In this study, a series of reservoir sandstone cores were obtained from Bartlesville Sandstone (in Eastern Kansas) and aged with heavy crude oil (from the same reservoir) at 95°C for 45 days. Five reservoir cores were used in this study, and five treatments were performed. They were flooded with (a) steam; (b) formation hot water (FHW); (c) low salinity hot water (LSHW; (d) steam + FHW; and (e) steam + LSHW (so-called LSASF). The laboratory experiments showed that basic water flooding using FW recovered approximately 50% of OOIP. After that initial flood, upon switching to the various steam, FHW, LSHW, steam + FHW, and steam + LSHW treatments, the incremental oil recoveries were 5, 3.1, 6.3, 7.5, and 12% OOIP, respectively. The contact angle measurements showed that injecting steam + LSHW alters the wettability considerably more than using steam + FHW. The results of this work show that water flooding using LSHW in reservoir cores could improve oil recovery significantly because it both reduces oil viscosity and alters the rock wettability towards more water-wet. The results also showed using LSHW alternated with steam is more beneficial than using steam only or alternated with regular water due to the combined benefits of reducing gravity override and altering the wettability. Using LSHW water is more economical than using steam and gives significantly improved oil recovery, and using LSHW is more beneficial than ambient temperature LS water.
The present research has investigated the effect of microwave energy on improving the flow properties of heavy crude oil. The fragmentation of crude oil molecules was carried out with and without using 1 and 10 wt. % concentration of various types of H-donors like tetralin, cyclohexane, and naphtha. Microwave power of 320, 385, and 540 W and radiation time 1-9 min, and temperature were studied. The kinematic viscosity and asphaltene content were measured for evaluation the improving of heavy crude oil.
Results show that viscosity of crude oil decreased with increase H-donor concentration, a maximum percentage of viscosity reduction was10.63 % for tetralin at 6 min radiation time, while 8.67%, and 7.34% for cycl
... Show MoreBackground: the condition of hallux valgus is considered as the most common deformities affecting females more than males, characteristically manifested as lateral deviation of the big toe and widening of first and second inter -metatarsal angle with a deformity of second toe in some severe cases. Objective: to make a radiological and clinical assessment of two surgical methods of osteotomy used in treatment of hallux valgu and to compare between them: first one is the distal dome osteotomy, and second one is a distal wedge metatarsal osteotomy. Patients and methods: a total of 36 feet of 28 patients suffer from hallux valgus, with mean age of 50.3 years were included in this study, followed for 6- 30 months ( mean follow-up of 8.8 months).
... Show MoreThis paper demonstrates an experimental and numerical study aimed to compare the influence of openings of different configurations on the flexural behavior of prestressed concrete rafters. The experimental program consisted of testing six simply supported prestressed concrete rafters; 5 rafters are perforated, and the other one is solid as a reference. All rafters were tested under monotonic midpoint load. The variable which has been investigated in this work was the opening’s configuration (quadrilateral or circular) with the same upper and lower chords depths. The results indicate improvement in the beam flexural behavior using the circular openings compared to the quadrilateral o
Visualization of subsurface geology is mainly considered as the framework of the required structure to provide distribution of petrophysical properties. The geological model helps to understand the behavior of the fluid flow in the porous media that is affected by heterogeneity of the reservoir and helps in calculating the initial oil in place as well as selecting accurate new well location. In this study, a geological model is built for Qaiyarah field, tertiary reservoir, relying on well data from 48 wells, including the location of wells, formation tops and contour map. The structural model is constructed for the tertiary reservoir, which is an asymmetrical anticline consisting of two domes separated by a saddle. It is found that
... Show MoreThe CO2-Assisted Gravity Drainage process (GAGD) has been introduced to become one of the mostinfluential process to enhance oil recovery (EOR) methods in both secondary and tertiary recovery through immiscibleand miscible mode. Its advantages came from the ability of this process to provide gravity-stable oil displacement forenhancing oil recovery. Vertical injectors for CO2 gas have been placed at the crest of the pay zone to form a gas capwhich drain the oil towards the horizontal producing oil wells located above the oil-water-contact. The advantage ofhorizontal well is to provide big drainage area and small pressure drawdown due to the long penetration. Manysimulation and physical models of CO2-AGD process have been implemented
... Show MoreNet pay is one of the most important parameters used in determining initial oil in place of a reservoir. It can be delineated through the using of limiting values of the petrophysical properties of the reservoir. Those limiting values are named as the cutoff. This paper provides an insight into the application of regression line method in estimating porosity, clay volume and water saturation cutoff values in Mishrif reservoir/ Missan oil fields. The study included 29 wells distributed in seven oilfields of Halfaya, Buzurgan, Dujaila, Noor, Fauqi, Amara and Kumait.
This study is carried out by applying two types of linear regressions: Least square and Reduce Major Axis Regression.
The Mishrif formation was
... Show MoreThe present work aimed to study the efficiency of nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO) membrane for heavy metal removal from wastewater and study the factors affecting the performance of these two membranes: feed concentrations for heavy metal ions, pressure, and flow rate. The experimental results showed, heavy metals concentration in permeate increase with raise in feed concentrations, decline with increase in flow rate. The raise of pressure, heavy metals concentration decreases for RO membrane, but for NF membrane the concentration decrease and then at high pressure increase. The rejection percentage for chromium in NF and RO is 99.7% and 99.9%, for copper is 98.4% and 99.3%, for zinc is 97.9% and 99.5%, for nickel is 97.2% and
... Show MoreEmpirical and statistical methodologies have been established to acquire accurate permeability identification and reservoir characterization, based on the rock type and reservoir performance. The identification of rock facies is usually done by either using core analysis to visually interpret lithofacies or indirectly based on well-log data. The use of well-log data for traditional facies prediction is characterized by uncertainties and can be time-consuming, particularly when working with large datasets. Thus, Machine Learning can be used to predict patterns more efficiently when applied to large data. Taking into account the electrofacies distribution, this work was conducted to predict permeability for the four wells, FH1, FH2, F
... Show MoreIn this study, the upgrading of Iraqi heavy crude oil was achieved utilizing the solvent deasphalting approach (SDA) and enhanced solvent deasphalting (e-SDA) by adding Nanosilica (NS). The NS was synthesized from local sand. The XRD result, referred to as the amorphous phase, has a wide peak at 2Θ= (22 - 23º) The inclusion of hydrogen-bonded silanol groups (Si–O–H) and siloxane groups (Si–O–Si) in the FTIR spectra. The SDA process was handled using n-pentane solvent at various solvent to oil ratios (SOR) (4-16/1ml/g), room and reflux temperature, and 0.5 h mixing time. In the e-SDA process, various fractions of the NS (1–7 wt.%) have been utilized with 61 nm particle size and 560.86 m²/g surface area in the presence of 12 m
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