An Experimental and Modeling Investigation of Oil-injected Flow Rate on Asphaltene Deposition in Carbonate Core Sample

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI)

2 Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Sharif University of Technology

Abstract

Aasphaltene consists of heavy hydrocarbon molecules which are in colloidal suspension in the oil and stabilized by resins adsorbed on their surface. A very few works currently exist on asphaltene deposition under dynamic conditions using porous media. In this work, experimental and modeling studies were conducted to determine the effect of asphaltene deposition on the reduction of the permeability of carbonate rock samples at different oil injection rates. The experimental results show that an increase in the injection flow rate can result in an increase in asphaltene deposition and thereby permeability reduction. Also, it can be observed that at a lower injection flow rate, a monotonic decrease in the permeability of the rock samples can be attained upon increasing the injection flow rate, while at higher injection rates after a decrease in rock permeability, an increasing trend is observed before a steady state condition can be reached. Sensitivity analysis was done to understand the effects of some parameters such as surface deposition rate coefficient and entrainment rate coefficient on asphaltene deposition. It can be found that the reduction of permeability decreases by increasing β. Finally, it can be concluded that reduction of permeability increases as surface deposition rate coefficient rises.

Keywords

References

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Journal of Petroleum Research
Volume 23, Issue 74 - Serial Number 74
September and October 2013
Pages 35-48

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