An Investigation on the Effects of the Reservoir Variables and Operational Parameters on Steam-Propane Injection Performance

Abstract

The application of steam injection in different forms of processes is widely used as thermal heavy oil recovery. Several studies have been carried out to evaluate the effect of injecting steam with gaseous additives such as hexane, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, and propane. One of the most useful additives to steam is propane. The use of propane has been found to accelerate oil production due to dry distillation process in which light hydrocarbon fractions evaporated and carried by propane. In contact with cooler part of reservoir, light fractions condense and are miscible with oil. Therefore surface tension and oil viscosity are reduced. In this thesis, simulation studies of steam-propane injection were performed using seven pseudocomponent heavy oil model (12° API and 1820 c.p. viscosity at reservoir conditions). A 3-D Cartesian model was built to represent one-quarter a five-spot 10-acre pattern and 100 ft thickness. Steam and steam-propane were injected in reservoir conditions. The effect of some reservoir variables and operational parameters were investigated. The simulation results show that increasing horizontal permeability, injection rate, steam quality, and steam temperature in steam-propane injection process on single porosity reservoirs cause increasing of oil recovery factor, accelerating the start and peaks of oil production.