Determination of Diffusion Coefficient for Alkane Solvent–CO2 Mixtures in Heavy Oil with Consideration of Swelling Effect

Abstract

A generalized methodology has been developed and successfully applied to determine diffusion coefficient of alkane solvent–CO2–heavy oil systems with consideration of swelling effect. Theoretically, a one-dimensional and one-way mass transfer model incorporating the volume translated Peng–Robinson equation of state (PR EOS) has been developed to describe the mass transfer from alkane solvent–CO2 mixture to heavy oil, which accounts for the oil swelling effect resulted from gas dissolution. The heavy oil sample has been characterized as three pseudocomponents, while the binary interaction parameter (BIP) correlations are tuned with the experimentally measured saturation pressures. Both apparent diffusion coefficients for gas mixtures and individual diffusion coefficient of each component of a mixture are determined once the discrepancy between the measured and calculated dynamic swelling factors of heavy oil has been minimized. The volume translated PR EOS with the three characterized pseudocomponents and ...