Two different technical criteria for determining the minimum miscibility pressures (MMPs) from the slim-tube and coreflood tests

Abstract

In this paper, two different technical criteria, i.e., the oil recovery factor (ORF) and break-over pressure (BOP), are studied and compared to determine the minimum miscibility pressures (MMPs) of two light crude oil–CO2 systems. More specifically, five slim-tube tests with the live light crude oil–CO2 system and five coreflood tests with the dead light crude oil–CO2 system are conducted to measure the ORFs at different injection pressures and the actual reservoir temperature of Tres=53.0°C. The linear and quadratic extrapolation methods as well as the linear intersection method are applied by using the ORF criterion. Three different high threshold ORFs of 88% for the slim-tube tests or 87% for the coreflood tests, 90% and 95% are chosen to determine the MMPs by means of the linear and quadratic extrapolation methods. On the other hand, the linear intersection method is used to determine the MMP by finding a sudden slope change point in the measured ORF versus injection pressure curve for the slim-tube or coreflood tests. Moreover, the BOP criterion is based on the cubic regression of the measured ORF versus injection pressure data and used to determine the MMPs, which correspond to four different low threshold slopes or incremental ORFs per incremental injection pressure increase of 5, 3, 2, and 1%/MPa. It is found that different MMP ranges can be obtained from the same measured ORF versus injection pressure data if different MMP criteria, regression methods, and threshold values or numerical options are adopted. The determined MMP is better given in a small pressure range than specified as a definitive pressure value. Two MMP ranges of the live and dead light crude oil–CO2 systems are determined to be 15.2–15.4MPa and 12.4–12.9MPa at Tres=53.0°C, respectively.