Experimental Study of Heavy Oil Upgrading of In-Situ Hydrogen

Abstract

It was reported that hydrogen production from heavy oil reservoirs was feasible. To study the effect of in-situ hydrogen on heavy oil upgrading, a static experiment of hydrogen upgrading heavy oil under different conditions was designed with nitrogen as the control group. The composition and molar content of the produced gas was analyzed by gas chromatography (GC), the microstructure of coke was analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM), and the change of carbon number of oil was analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The results showed that in-situ hydrogen made heavy oil produce more light hydrocarbons. The porous coke produced by heavy oil in a hydrogen atmosphere was favorable for combustion. In addition, under the action of hydrogen, the hydrocarbon in heavy oil will be accelerated to transform from high-carbon number alkanes to low-carbon number alkanes. And the viscosity reduction effect was remarkable, the highest viscosity reduction rate reached 99.79%.