Abstract
Carbon dioxide (CO2) injection is a well-established enhanced oil recovery method. The optimization process of CO2 injection is usually performed through estimation of two physical properties, i.e., minimum miscibility and first-contact miscibility pressures (MMP and FCMP) for the crude oil–CO2 system. In this experimental study, the equilibrium IFT of the crude oil–CO2 system is measured at (313.15 and 323.15 K) for two oil types (i.e., live and dead crude oil) using the axisymmetric pendant drop shape analysis method. Vanishing interfacial tension technique is also applied to estimate the MMP and FCMP. The experimental results demonstrate that IFT decreases with different trends as the equilibrium pressure increases for the systems of live oil/CO2 and dead oil/CO2 systems. The IFT test results demonstrate that the estimated MMP and FCMP values of crude oil–CO2 system increase with temperature. It was also observed that the presence of methane gas in the oil phase increases the MMP value, whereas it decreases the FCMP.
Highlights
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods become important and get attentions in petroleum industry
From the results obtained from this experimental work, the following conclusions can be drawn: 1. The experimental results show that the equilibrium interfacial tension (IFT) of the dead and live oil–CO2 decreases with pressure; it increases with temperature
These different behaviors of pressure and temperature on IFT are mainly due to the carbon dioxide dissolution into the crude oil that increases with pressure and decreases with temperature
Summary
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods become important and get attentions in petroleum industry. For this purpose, gas injection as an efficient enhanced oil recovery technique has been utilized to recover the remaining oil in place by reduction of the interfacial tension and viscosity and maintaining the reservoir pressure (Jha 1985; Rojas and Ali 1988). CO2 injection method has been suggested for processes of enhanced oil recovery and CO2 sequestration (Aycaguer et al 2001; Kokal et al 1992; Mathiassen 2003; Sarma 2003). The CO2 flooding process, depending on the highest possible operating pressure and minimum miscible conditions, can be performed at both
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