Phase-Behavior Modeling of Hydrocarbon Fluids in Nanopores Using PR-EOS Coupled with a Modified Young-Laplace Equation.

Abstract

The effect of capillary pressure on the vapor–liquid two-phase equilibrium calculation has been extensively studied for the past two decades. However, the calculation accuracy is often weakened by the false assumptions and inherent flaws present in the modeling process. In this work, a modified Young–Laplace equation proposed by Tan and Piri [Tan, S.; Piri, M. Equation-of-State Modeling of Confined-Fluid Phase Equilibria in Nanopores. Fluid Phase Equilibr. 2015,393, 48–63.] is coupled with volume-translated Peng–Robinson equation of state to study the effect of capillary pressure on the two-phase equilibrium calculation in confined nanopores. In order to successfully apply the modified Young–Laplace equation during the vapor–liquid equilibrium calculation process, this study models the tuning parameter λ in the modified Young–Laplace equation (as proposed by Tan and Piri for perturbed-chain statistical associating fluid theory equation of state) for several pure hydrocarbons and their mixtures by matching experimental data collected from the literature. The tuning parameter λ can be expressed as a unique function for each pure substance or mixture. It is found that the tuning parameter λ shows a quadratic polynomial relationship with temperature, and the value of λ is always less than one. The λ can become negative under certain circumstances, which adjusts the capillary pressure to a lower value. It increases with an increasing pore radius; this is different from the results obtained by Tan and Piri which showed that the tuning parameter λ decreases with an increasing pore radius. The above rules apply to the tuning parameter λ obtained for both pure substances and mixtures. Using the two-phase equilibrium calculation coupled with the modified Young–Laplace equation, the calculated vapor pressures for pure substances and two-phase boundaries for mixtures match very well with the experimental data. Implementation of the modified Young–Laplace equation greatly improves the accuracy of the two-phase equilibrium calculation considering the capillarity effect. Such a modeling strategy could be integrated into a reservoir simulator to conduct more accurate flow simulations for tight/shale reservoirs.