Abstract
At present, large water demand and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have emerged as challenges of steam injection for oil thermal recovery. This paper proposed a strategy of superheated steam injection by the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTR) for thermal recovery of heavy oil, which has less demand of water and emission of CO2. The paper outlines the problems of conventional steam injection and addresses the advantages of superheated steam injection by HTR from the aspects of technology, economy, and environment. A Geographic Information System (GIS) embedded with a thermal hydraulic analysis function is designed and developed to analyze the strategy, which can make the analysis work more practical and credible. Thermal hydraulic analysis using this GIS is carried out by applying this strategy to a reference heavy oil field. Two kinds of injection are considered and compared: wet steam injection by conventional boilers and superheated steam injection by HTR. The heat loss, pressure drop, and possible phase transformation are calculated and analyzed when the steam flows through the pipeline and well tube and is finally injected into the oil reservoir. The result shows that the superheated steam injection from HTR is applicable and promising for thermal recovery of heavy oil reservoirs.
Highlights
Steam injection [1,2,3] is the most widely used and the most efficient process available today among the various enhanced oil recovery techniques currently being employed in heavy oil reservoirs and tar sand deposits
This study indicates that the cost of process heat or high-temperature steam produced by a HTGR can be competitive with the steam produced by normal fossil plant
The strategy of superheated steam injection with a modified design of the secondary loop of High-Temperature Reactor (HTR)-PM is proposed for thermal recovery of heavy oil
Summary
Steam injection [1,2,3] is the most widely used and the most efficient process available today among the various enhanced oil recovery techniques currently being employed in heavy oil reservoirs and tar sand deposits. It is applied to analyze the thermal hydraulic process in a reference heavy oil field where two kinds of injection are considered and compared: wet steam injection by boiler and superheated steam injection by HTR-PM. Under the same mass flow rate, the steam injection by HTRPM has characteristics of higher temperature, more enthalpy and larger specific volume than the wet steam injection by conventional boiler It will result in more intensive physical and chemical reactions between reservoir fluid and minerals, higher reduction of oil viscosity, and bigger expansion of crude oil volume, and so forth.
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