3D Physical Simulation Research Articles

OkayPlan: Obstacle Kinematics Augmented Dynamic real-time path Planning via particle swarm optimization

Existing Global Path Planning (GPP) algorithms predominantly presume planning in static environments. This assumption immensely limits their applications to Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) that typically navigate in dynamic environments. To address this limitation, we present OkayPlan, a GPP algorithm capable of generating safe and short paths in dynamic scenarios at a real-time executing speed (125 Hz on a desktop-class computer). Specifically, we approach the challenge of dynamic obstacle avoidance by formulating the path planning problem as an Obstacle Kinematics Augmented Optimization Problem (OKAOP), which can be efficiently resolved through a PSO-based optimizer at a real-time speed. Meanwhile, a Dynamic Prioritized Initialization (DPI) mechanism that adaptively initializes potential solutions for the optimization problem is established to further ameliorate the solution quality. Additionally, a relaxation strategy that facilitates the autonomous tuning of OkayPlan’s hyperparameters in dynamic environments is devised. Comprehensive experiments, including comparative evaluations, ablation studies, and applications to 3D physical simulation platforms, have been conducted to substantiate the efficacy of our approach. Results indicate that OkayPlan outstrips existing methods in terms of path safety, length optimality, and computational efficiency, establishing it as a potent GPP technique for dynamic environments. The video and code associated with this paper are accessible at https://github.com/XinJingHao/OkayPlan.

Intermolecular Forces in a Physical Molecular Visualization System: A Human-Computer Interaction Application

This paper extends the concept of self-reconfigurable physical programming to incorporate attraction and repulsion forces between physical objects controlled by a software, Unity 3D engine. Those forces are further explained as force curves that justify the behavior of molecules under specific circumstances. A better programming methodology for physical structures is represented in this paper for demonstrating an interactive 3D physical simulation of the attraction and repulsion forces. The bottom-up programming of self-reconfigurable mid-air flying drones has proved to be more efficient in facilitating code modifications, maintenance, and scalability. The implementation evaluation covered drones’ response latency and accuracy as a drones’ deviation ratio from the correct path. The evaluation results show marginal latency measures and considerably high accuracy in the drones’ movements. This opens the door for many future works on this subject to improve its scalability and adaptability in similar self-reconfigurable physical structures programming projects.

Modeling and Simulation of a Planar Permanent Magnet On-Chip Power Inductor

The on-chip integration of a power inductor together with other power converter components of small sizes and high-saturation currents, while maintaining a desired or high inductance value, is here pursued. The use of soft magnetic cores increases inductance density but results in a reduced saturation current. This article presents a 3D physical model and a magnetic circuit model for an integrated on-chip power inductor (OPI) to double the saturation current using permanent magnet (PM) material. A ~50 nH, 7.5 A spiral permanent magnet on-chip power inductor (PMOI) is here designed, and a 3D physical model is then developed and simulated using the ANSYS®/Maxwell® software package (version 2017.1). The 3D physical model simulation results agree with the presented magnetic circuit model, and show that in the example PMOI design, the addition of the PM increases the saturation current of the OPI from 4 A to 7.5 A, while the size and inductance value remain unchanged.

Experimental investigation of in situ combustion (ISC) in heavy oil thermal recovery

With the intensification of global climate change, there is an urgent need to change the energy structure of oil and gas to reduce the impact on the environment. As a thermally enhanced oil recovery technique, in situ combustion (ISC) is very important for reducing carbon emissions in the petroleum industry through the comprehensive utilization of oil displacement and storage in reservoirs. In this paper, the similarity parameters of a three-dimensional (3D) physical simulation of ISC were determined, the temperature field changes in the combustion process were monitored in real time, and a 3D field map was obtained. The oxidation characteristics of heavy oil were examined via thermogravimetry (TG), and the results showed that the oxidation process of heavy oil had three stages. The experimental results indicated that ISC could greatly increase the reservoir temperature, improve the quality of crude oil through high-temperature cracking, reduce the viscosity of crude oil and enhance the oil fluidity. The recovery factor from the ISC reached 53.27%. The formation of the coking zone was caused by various chemical and physical changes that occurred at high temperatures. Moreover, the formation process led to a concentration of the remaining oil in the small-aperture channels in the coking zone; this reduced the fluidity and increased the production difficulty. This study could provide guidance for the development of heavy oil reservoirs.

Building isolation against train-induced vibrations considering the effects of soil and structure: A numerical and experimental study

Base isolation is probably the most prevalent method used to protect buildings from disruptive train-induced vibrations. While the isolators' performance has been the subject of several studies, certain vital limitations remain. Firstly, the optimal effectiveness of isolators with respect to the characteristics of the superstructure and underlying soil is unclear. Secondly, there is a notable lack of a prediction model assessing the isolators' efficacy before any detailed analysis. Lastly, the dearth of empirical evidence that testifies to the performance of isolators in real situations is palpable. This study was devoted to addressing these shortcomings. In order to meet this goal, a 2D numerical model of a building, soil medium, and under-foundation resilient layer (UFRL) was created. Extensive parametric analysis of the model demonstrated that the performance of UFRLs was significantly (up to 15 dB) affected by the features of the soil and building. The conditions in which UFRLs have optimal performance were identified. Based on the results obtained, a prediction model was proposed to estimate the efficacy of UFRLs. Afterward, a 3D numerical and physical simulation of a five-story building was developed to evaluate the performance of UFRLs and validate the proposed prediction model in practical scenarios. A comparison of predicted and computed insertion loss values showed that the mean absolute error for the sixteen scenarios examined here is 1.2 dB.

Physical and Numerical Simulations of Steam Drive and Gravity Drainage Using the Confined Bottom Oil–Water Transition Zone to Develop Super Heavy Oil

The existence of the bottom oil–water transition zone (BTZ) greatly impairs the performance of the conventional steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) process and its mitigation measures are very limited. In order to accelerate oil production and decrease the Steam-to-Oil Ratio (SOR), a promising technology involving a steam drive and gravity drainage (SDGD) process by placing dual-horizontal wells with high permeability in the BTZ was systematically studied. This paper conducted two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) physical simulations as well as 2D numerical simulation of the SDGD process to explore the mechanism, potential, and application conditions. The research findings indicate that the SDGD process in the BTZ with enhanced permeability through dilation stimulation can achieve higher oil production and lower SOR than the SAGD process. This process fully leverages the advantage of the BTZ to quickly establish inter-well thermal and hydraulic connectivity. The steam chamber first forms around the injector and then spreads towards the producer. By exerting the horizontal displacement of drained oil, oil production rapidly ramps up and keeps at a high rate under the synergistic effect of steam drive and gravity drainage. These insights enhance our understanding of the mechanism, potential, and application conditions of the SDGD process in the confined BTZ to develop super heavy oil or oil sands.

Fast virtual view synthesis for an 8K 3D light-field display based on cutoff-NeRF and 3D voxel rendering.

Three-dimensional (3D) light-field displays can provide an immersive visual experience, which has attracted significant attention. However, the generating of high-quality 3D light-field content in the real world is still a challenge because it is difficult to capture dense high-resolution viewpoints of the real world with the camera array. Novel view synthesis based on CNN can generate dense high-resolution viewpoints from sparse inputs but suffer from high-computational resource consumption, low rendering speed, and limited camera baseline. Here, a two-stage virtual view synthesis method based on cutoff-NeRF and 3D voxel rendering is presented, which can fast synthesize dense novel views with smooth parallax and 3D images with a resolution of 7680 × 4320 for the 3D light-field display. In the first stage, an image-based cutoff-NeRF is proposed to implicitly represent the distribution of scene content and improve the quality of the virtual view. In the second stage, a 3D voxel-based image rendering and coding algorithm is presented, which quantify the scene content distribution learned by cutoff-NeRF to render high-resolution virtual views fast and output high-resolution 3D images. Among them, a coarse-to-fine 3D voxel rendering method is proposed to improve the accuracy of voxel representation effectively. Furthermore, a 3D voxel-based off-axis pixel encoding method is proposed to speed up 3D image generation. Finally, a sparse views dataset is built by ourselves to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate the method's effectiveness, which can fast synthesize novel views and 3D images with high resolution in real 3D scenes and physical simulation environments. PSNR of the virtual view is about 29.75 dB, SSIM is about 0.88, and the synthetic 8K 3D image time is about 14.41s. We believe that our fast high-resolution virtual viewpoint synthesis method can effectively improve the application of 3D light field display.

Research on rational development mode of gas cap marginal water reservoir

In this paper, based on the 3D physical simulation experiment of gas cap marginal water reservoirs, a reasonable development method for gas cap marginal water reservoirs is studied. The results show that the ultimate recovery rate of exhausted development is 32.24%, and that of flooding water flooding development is 51.17%, which is 18.93% higher than that of exhausted development. In different permeability layers, there is an amount of residual oil, which is distributed in the oil ring and gas cap. At the same time, the injection time and productivity of flooding water flooding were compared and analyzed by numerical simulation. The one-year recovery rate of exhausted development is the highest, and when the injection ratio is 1.2, the recovery rate is the highest. The research in this paper is of great significance to the formulation of production parameters and the implementation of later reformation measures for the depleted gas cap marginal water reservoirs.

Analysis of impact ionization on RF power LDMOS reliability under RF life test in radar system

This paper focuses on correlation between the electrical parameter shifts and the failure phenomena that appeared after pulsed RF life tests applied to RF power LDMOS transistor (Radio Frequency Laterally Diffused-Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor). The results of the test bench (radar circuit) are measured in real time. The failure rate is more significant at low temperatures after the aging life test. The electrical performances are shifted, notably, IGS, VTH, GM, RDSON, CRSS, gain, and S-parameter S21. A 3D physical simulation (SILVACO-TCAD) is used to highlight the phenomena linked to the characteristic's degradation. The impact ionization induces physical degradations in the study of transistors, which are manifested by a variation in their electrical performance. It showed that the located failure zone is due to the device's shifted characteristics, which are deeply correlated with the structure area. The goal of the paper is to prove the failure mechanism through the characteristics evaluation origin, that is started by the carrier generation, because of the impact ionization phenomenon. The demonstration is based on the physical simulations are conducted at RF power NLDMOS. The outcomes show that the mechanism is due to the augmented carrier injection into the advanced silicon dioxide layer (SiO2) or/and in the Si/SiO2 interface state. The consistency between the physical simulations and experimental results emphasizes the theoretical analysis performed in this work.

Autonomous obstacle avoidance of UAV based on deep reinforcement learning1

In the intelligent unmanned systems, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) obstacle avoidance technology is the core and primary condition. Traditional algorithms are not suitable for obstacle avoidance in complex and changeable environments based on the limited sensors on UAVs. In this article, we use an end-to-end deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithm to achieve the UAV autonomously avoid obstacles. For the problem of slow convergence in DRL, a Multi-Branch (MB) network structure is proposed to ensure that the algorithm can get good performance in the early stage; for non-optimal decision-making problems caused by overestimation, the Revise Q-value (RQ) algorithm is proposed to ensure that the agent can choose the optimal strategy for obstacle avoidance. According to the flying characteristics of the rotor UAV, we build a V-Rep 3D physical simulation environment to test the obstacle avoidance performance. And experiments show that the improved algorithm can accelerate the convergence speed of agent and the average return of the round is increased by 25%.

Cyclic In-Situ Combustion Process for Improved Heavy Oil Recovery after Cyclic Steam Stimulation

Summary Cyclic in-situ combustion (ISC) is a novel process with great potential for thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR). In this study, a 3D physical simulation experiment of cyclic ISC after cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) was carried out for the first time. The mass loss during heavy oil oxidation was studied by thermogravimetry (TG) and the preheating temperature of sandpack was determined by differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). The oxidation process of heavy oil in a porous medium was investigated by a heavy oil static oxidation experiment. The development characteristics and EOR mechanism of cyclic ISC after CSS were studied through 3D physical simulation experiments and the characteristics of the coking zone was studied by scanning electron microscope (SEM) and computed tomography (CT). The results of the thermal analysis indicate that three different regions were observed with increasing temperature: low-temperature oxidation zone (LTO), fuel deposition zone (FD), and high-temperature oxidation zone (HTO). When the temperature reaches 480°C, the mixed oil sand has the most exothermic effect and the high-temperature oxidation reaction is the most vigorous. The results of the 3D physical simulation show that steam channeling and steam overlay in CSS reduced the swept volume of steam and heat usage rate. During the cyclic ISC, the oil bank can overcome the heterogeneity of the oil reservoir caused by steam channeling and steam overlay, which makes the combustion front move forward smoothly. Cyclic ISC can greatly increase the temperature of the zone near the well, and upgrade the crude oil through cracking to reduce the viscosity of heavy oil. The foaming oil formed by the dissolution of flue gas improves the fluidity of the crude oil. The oil recovery of CSS is 19.3%, and the oil recovery of cyclic ISC increased by 13.2%. SEM and CT show that flake black solid coke was attached to the surface of the sand at the coking zone. The coking zone is a porous medium structure with a porosity of 35.14%, which has little effect on the oil recovery in the process of cyclic ISC.

Multi-sensor optimal deployment based efficient and synchronous data acquisition in large three-dimensional physical similarity simulation

PurposeThis paper aims to propose a deployment optimization and efficient synchronous acquisition method for compressive stress sensors used by stress distribution law research based on the genetic algorithm and numerical simulations. The authors established a new method of collecting the mining compressive stress-strain distribution data to address the problem of the number of sensors and to optimize the sensor locations in physical similarity simulations to improve the efficiency and accuracy of data collection.Design/methodology/approachFirst, numerical simulations were used to obtain the compressive stress distribution curve under specific mining conditions. Second, by comparing the mean square error between a fitted curve and simulation data for different numbers of sensors, a genetic algorithm was used to optimize the three-dimensional (3D) spatial deployment of sensors. Third, the authors designed an efficient synchronous acquisition module to allow distributed sensors to achieve synchronous and efficient acquisition of hundreds of data points through a built-in on-board database and a synchronous sampling communication structure.FindingsThe sensor deployment scheme was established through the genetic algorithm, A synchronous and selective data acquisition method was established for reduced the amount of sensor data required under synchronous acquisition and improved the system acquisition efficiency. The authors obtained a 3D compressive stress distribution when the advancement was 200 m on a large-scale 3D physical similarity simulation platform.Originality/valueThe proposed method provides a new optimization method for sensor deployment in physical similarity simulations, which improves the efficiency and accuracy of system data acquisition, providing accurate acquisition data for experimental data analysis.

Three-Dimensional Physical Simulation of Heavy Oil Exploitation by Hot Solvent Injection

To improve the thermal effects of solvents on heavy oil reservoirs and realize the combined action of multiple flooding mechanisms, such as solvent heating and extraction, without steam mixing, based on the M Block heavy oil reservoir in Canada, three sets of comparative hot solvent-assisted gravity drainage experiments under different temperatures and pressures were carried out through an indoor three-dimensional (3D) physical simulation device. The development characteristics of the solvent chamber in the hot solvent-assisted gravity drainage technology were studied under different pressures and temperatures, and the recovery factor, cumulative oil exchange rate, and solvent retention rate were analyzed. The results showed that due to the effect of gravity differentiation, the development morphology of the solvent chamber could be divided into three stages: rapid ascent, lateral expansion, and slow descent. When the temperature was constant, the reservoir pressure decreased, the recovery rate increased, the cumulative oil exchange rate increased, and the solvent retention rate decreased; when the pressure was constant, the temperature increased, the viscosity of heavy oil decreased, the recovery rate increased, the cumulative oil exchange rate increased, and the solvent retention rate was low. Additionally, the study also showed that for hot solvents in different phases, the use of hot solvent vapor not only required less injected solvent but also exhibited a high oil production rate, which shortened production time and reduced energy consumption. Moreover, the oil recovery rate was higher than 60%, the solvent retention rate was lower than 10%, and the cumulative oil exchange rate was higher than 3 t / t , which constituted better economic benefits and provided a reliable theoretical basis for onsite oilfield applications.

A gas migration law study of a large-scale 3D physical similarity simulation with an adaptive Kalman filter algorithm

PurposeIn this study, a physical similarity simulation plays a significant role in the study of crack evolution and the gas migration mechanism. A sensor is deployed inside a comparable artificial rock formation to assure the accuracy of the experiment results. During the building of the simulated rock formation, a huge volume of acidic gas is released, causing numerous sensor measurement mistakes. Additionally, the gas concentration estimation approach is subject to uncertainty because of the complex rock formation environment. As a result, the purpose of this study is to introduce an adaptive Kalman filter approach to reduce observation noise, increase the accuracy of the gas concentration estimation model and, finally, determine the gas migration law.Design/methodology/approachFirst, based on the process of gas floatation-diffusion and seepage, the gas migration model is established according to Fick’s second law, and a simplified modeling method using diffusion flux instead of gas concentration is presented. Second, an adaptive Kalman filter algorithm is introduced to establish a gas concentration estimation model, taking into account the model uncertainty and the unknown measurement noise. Finally, according to a large-scale physical similarity simulation platform, a thorough experiment about gas migration is carried out to extract gas concentration variation data with certain ventilation techniques and to create a gas chart of the time-changing trend.FindingsThis approach is used to determine the changing process of gas distribution for a certain ventilation mode. The results match the rock fissure distribution condition derived from the microseismic monitoring data, proving the effectiveness of the approach.Originality/valueFor the first time in large-scale three-dimensional physical similarity simulations, the adaptive Kalman filter data processing method based on the inverse Wishart probability density function is used to solve the problem of an inaccurate process and measurement noise, laying the groundwork for studying the gas migration law and determining the gas migration mechanism.

Experimental Study on Well Placement Optimization for Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage to Enhance Recovery of Thin Layer Oil Sand Reservoirs

SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) technique is one of the most efficient thermal recovery technologies for exploiting Mackay River thin layer oil sand reservoirs. However, when making use of the traditional SAGD technique (the production and injection well are located on the same axis with the horizontal well spacing of 0 m), the steam chamber development is usually insufficient because of the high longitudinal sweep rate of steam, which seriously influences the SAGD performance for developing thin layer oil sand reservoirs especially. It is extremely important to find an economical and practicable method to promote the steam chamber development in thin oil sand reservoirs in the process of SAGD production; optimizing well placement is a reliable method. In this paper, an improved well placement method is proposed to enhance production performance of traditional SAGD, which is changing the horizontal well spacing to place the production well below of the side of the injection well (two wells are not located on the same axis). Three groups of 2D visualization experiments with different horizontal distances between two wells (0 cm, 10 cm, and 20 cm) were carried out, respectively, to observe the development and change of the steam chamber development, and to explore the EOR mechanisms. On the 2D experiment basis, optimal horizontal distance was selected to perform 3D physical simulation experiment to study and verity the production mechanism systematically. The results of 2D visualization experiment showed that the final oil recoveries of experimental groups with 10 cm and 20 cm horizontal distances were 7.6% and 2.3% higher than those of traditional SGAD (horizontal distance was 0 cm), respectively. Combined with 3D experimental results, the change in the horizontal relative position of two wells makes the steam first spread laterally between injecting and producing wells; thus, the lateral development of the steam chamber was promoted, and changes of temperature field also display that the lateral sweep area of steam was increased obviously and the form of steam chamber is changed. Meanwhile, the generation of appropriate horizontal well spacing can combine the effect of steam displacement and gravity drainage better and improve the sweep efficiency of steam. Nevertheless, the overlarge horizontal well spacing will also hinder the steam chamber development because the strength of steam overlap is weakened. Furthermore, the findings of this study help for better understanding that changing the horizontal well spacing can promote the lateral development of steam chamber, which can be used to enhance the oil recovery of thin layer oil sand reservoirs especially.

Study on Start-Up Process of SAGD by Solvent: Experiment Research and Process Design

Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) has been used to develop the “super heavy” oil reservoirs in Canada. The viscosity can reach more than 30,000 cp at 50°C. Moreover, owing to their continental deposit origin, the reservoirs have a low porosity and permeability. Because of these challenges, the conventional steam circulation start-up process takes 6 to 12 months before the well pair can be switched to production. Solvent has been used to start-up SAGD with success. But now, low price of oil and high cost of solvent make solvent-assisted start-up process limited. This paper applies experimental schemes, such as viscosity reduction rate evaluation, core flooding, and 3D physical simulation, tests solvent performance, optimizes process parameters, and designs process solutions. Apply numerical simulation to test solvent-assisted SAGD start-up effect and calculate the cost. This paper researches a unique low-cost solvent compare with xylene. The basic properties and core flood experiment show that the two solvents are similar with viscosity reduction rate, asphalt dissolution rate, and injection pressure, and the price of solvent is 18% lower. The 3D model experiment shows that the average start-up time is reduced by 15%, and steam injection volume is reduced by 21.4%. The numerical simulation results show that without solvent, it will take 180 d for start-up process, and with solvent, the time has reduced by 50% and takes 90 days. Cost calculation results show that the cost will reduce 18% by solvent compared to xylene. Moreover, the production rate has been improved in production stage. This paper applies a 3D physical model to simulate the solvent-assisted SAGD start-up process. Research conclusions show the start-up mechanism of solvent and the process of temperature change of steam chamber.

Physical Simulation Test on Temperature Field Distribution of Artificial Vertical Straight Multirow Freezing Inclined Shaft

This study investigated the temperature field distribution of a freezing inclined shaft. Thus, a three-dimensional physical simulation test system was developed, and the system consists of six parts, which are simulation box and shaft model, loading system, freezing system, external environment simulation system, and data acquisition system. From the results of physical and mechanical property test of artificially frozen sand, in the range of 25°C to -20°C, the heat capacity of sand decreases first, then increases, decreases, and finally tends to be stable; the thermal conductivity of sand gradually increases and finally becomes stable; and the cohesion, internal friction angle, uniaxial compressive strength, and elastic modulus of artificially frozen sand all increase as the freezing temperature decreases. The three-dimensional physical simulation test and field measurement showed that the distance from the freezing pipe is the main factor affecting freezing wall temperature, and the closer to the freezing pipe, the faster the cooling rates. Comparison of theoretical calculation results and field measurement results shows that the calculation formula of freezing wall temperature with time of the inclined shaft can reflect the general law of freezing wall temperature cooling. Therefore, the 3D physical simulation test system is reliable and the test method is feasible.

Steam chamber expanding processes and bottom water invading characteristics during steam flooding in heavy oil reservoirs

It is very important to quantitatively analyze steam chamber expanding and bottom water invading during steam flooding. Firstly, a novel method was established to identify the moment of water invading based on the energy conservation law. Then, a series of experiments were carried out to research the effect of steam flooding through 3D physical simulation and oil-component analysis. The results showed that water invading was recognized through the inflection point of tangent slope of temperature vs. time. Steam mainly migrated in upper layer and hot water moved downwards into bottom layer. The four stages of steam flooding were corresponding to the growth processes of steam chamber, such as expanding, advancing, channeling and overriding. The ultimate oil recovery factor was only 36.00%. The shape of water coning deformed from a triangle to a trapezoid. Finally, the dimensionless volume of water coning was about 32.29%. During steam flooding, the content of oil components gradually changed due to the effect of distillation. The content of light hydrocarbon was higher at the front of steam chamber. However, heavy components mainly occupied the swept zone of steam flooding. The results are important in exploitation practice aiming at heavy oil reservoirs with bottom water.

Physical Model Test of Artificial Freezing-Inclined Shaft

Based on the vertical straight artificial freezing engineering in Northern Shaanxi, a three-dimensional (3D) physical simulation test system was developed, consisting of six parts, which are simulation box, shaft model, loading system, freezing system, external environment simulation system, and data acquisition system. The physical model and actual test results show that the 3D physical simulation test system is reasonable and reliable. The test model results show that the distance from the freezing pipe significantly affects the freezing wall temperature. For the case of four adjacent, two adjacent tangential freezing, and two adjacent axial freezing pipes, the cooling rates were 1.37, 2.79, and 1.96°C/h, respectively. The field measurement showed that the proximity to the freezing pipe increases the cooling rates. The cooling rates of points 1k#, 2k#, and 3k# were 25.61, 25.32, and 25.35 mm/d, respectively. The increment rates of vertical and horizontal freezing pressures with temperature were 8.78 and 2.97 kPa/°C, respectively. Furthermore, the freezing pressure time fitting formula was given. The calculated results of temperature and freezing pressure are consistent with the measured results, indicating the reasonability and reliability of the 3D physical simulation test scheme of the artificial freezing-inclined shaft in this work.

3D experimental investigation on enhanced oil recovery by flue gas assisted steam assisted gravity drainage

Flue gas assisted steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is a frontier technology to enhance oil recovery for heavy oil reservoirs. The carbon dioxide generated from the thermal recovery of heavy oil can be utilized and consumed to mitigate climate warming for the world. However, most studies are limited to merely use numerical simulation or small physical simulation device and hardly focus on large scale three-dimensions experiment, which cannot fully investigate the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) mechanism of flue gas assisted SAGD, thus the effect of flue gas on SAGD production performance is still not very clear. In this paper, large-scaled and high temperature and pressure resistant 3D physical simulation experiment was conducted, where simulated the real reservoir to a maximum extent, and systematically explored the EOR mechanisms of the flue gas assisted SAGD. Furthermore, the differences between the steam huff and puff, SAGD and flue gas assisted SAGD are discussed. The experimental result showed that the production effect of SAGD was improved by injecting flue gas, with the oil recovery was increased by 5.7%. With the help of thermocouple temperature measuring sensors, changes of temperature field display that flue gas can promote lateral re-development of the steam chamber, and the degree of reservoir exploitation around the horizontal wells has been increased particularly. What’s more, the addition of flue gas further increased the content of light components and decreased the content of heavy by comparing the content of heavy oil components produced in different production times.