Numerical simulation of asphaltene deposition in porous media induced by solvent injection

Abstract

We present numerical simulations of asphaltene deposition induced by solvent injection by the implementation of liquid-liquid equilibrium (LLE) data along with a reaction-based non-equilibrium mass transfer model. The interplay of viscous fingering and asphaltene deposition during the injection of dimethyl ether (DME) was studied. Our results reveal that one-dimensional approach fails to predict the real physics and underestimates the deposition. It is shown that DME injection leads to the upgrading of the produced oil. The results indicate that the dynamics of the viscous fingering are independent of the deposition rate and governed by the viscosity ratio. Our findings also suggest that grid dependency of deposition poses a computational challenge. To address this issue, we developed scaling relations to upscale the fine-scale deposition rate to the coarse-grid numerical simulations. This study finds application in solvent-based recovery processes and paves the way for integrating LLE data in numerical simulation of asphaltene deposition.