Negative Flash for Calculating the Intersecting Key Tielines in Multicomponent Gas Injection

Abstract

Gas injection is a widely used enhanced oil recovery method, and its application is expected to increase in the foreseeable future. In order to build a method of characteristics solution to a two-phase gas injection system, we must construct the composition route from the injection gas to the initial oil where all the intersecting key tielines must be identified. Calculation of these intersecting tielines requires a series of special negative flashes, which allow not only phase fractions outside the physical interval [0,1] but also negative feed compositions. The phase compositions from one negative flash are used to recombine the feed for the next negative flash. Despite the apparent complexity due to multicomponent phase equilibrium and transport, for pure component gas injection, negative flash and elimination of components can be performed in an alternating manner. In particular, if K-values are constant, there exists a simple feature that the vapor fraction roots (β-roots) for the Rachford–Rice equat...