Pressure and temperature effect on heavy-oil sand properties

Abstract

Heavy oil sands generally have quite large porosities, and their properties are quite temperature-dependent, since temperature has great influence on heavy oil properties. Moreover, pressure also has great influence on heavy oil sand properties, since pressure can cause the grain contact to change. Our work in this paper demonstrates that at high porosity, the sand grains are suspended in heavy oil; and at low porosity, heavy oil may work as cement in oil sands. Besides, the pressure effect on sand properties is simulated with theoretical models. In the end, we used Gassmann equation to calculate the heavy oil sand velocities change with temperature. We compared the simulation results under different situation, and analyzed the results.