Abstract
Oil swelling is an important phenomenon in CO2-EOR. According to various studies in the past, the degree of oil swelling depends on the partial pressure of CO2, temperature, and oil composition. However, we expect that other factors, such as oil saturation, capillary pressure, and grain size of reservoir rock must be also considered in evaluating oil swelling because they may influence the interfacial area between oil and CO2, which affects the dissolubility of CO2 in oil. Therefore, we had made clear the effect of the interfacial area on oil swelling in this study. Oil and CO2 were injected into a small see-through windowed high-pressure cell and oil swelling was observed under a microscope. The swelling factor increased with the increase of the specific interfacial area between oil and CO2. Moreover, oil swelling in porous media was observed using micro-models which had been made of two different diameter glass beads. Swelling factor in fine beads micro-model became larger than that in coarse beads micro-model whose interfacial area between oil and CO2 was smaller than that of fine beads micro-model. Therefore, the swelling factor is expected to be larger with an increase in the interfacial area in porous media. These results suggest that the oil swelling should be expressed as a function of oil saturation, capillary pressure, and grain size of reservoir rock which are related to the interfacial area as well as the partial pressure of CO2, temperature, and oil composition.
Highlights
Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) is expected to be a powerful tool to reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere and enhance the production of energy resources such as CO2-EOR
We expect that other factors, such as oil saturation, capillary pressure, and grain size of reservoir rock must be considered in evaluating oil swelling because they may influence the interfacial area between oil and CO2, which affects the dissolubility of CO2 in oil
The experimental results show the oil swelling factor is influenced by the specific interfacial area and it increases with increasing specific interfacial area
Summary
Carbon capture and utilization (CCU) is expected to be a powerful tool to reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere and enhance the production of energy resources such as CO2-EOR. The oil produced with CO2EOR can be expected to be 70 % ‘‘Carbon-free’’, because it can be evaluated from difference between the carbon content in the incremental oil produced and volume of CO2 left in the reservoir (Phares 2008). The production rate of CO2-EOR is dependent on many factors, such as interfacial tension reduction, oil viscosity reduction, oil swelling, formation permeability improvement, solution gas flooding, and density change of oil and water (Yongmao et al 2004). Oil viscosity reduction and oil swelling due to CO2 dissolution contribute to enhancing oil recovery considerably (Al-Jarba and Al-Anazi 2009; Heidaryan and Moghadasi 2012). Oil swelling increases oil saturation and the relative permeability of oil
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