Experiments were conducted to investigate the feasibility of in situ upgrading of
heavy oil by the use of an orgametallic catalyst and a hydrogen donor (tetralin). The
experiments used a vertical injection cell into which a mixture of sand, water, and Jobo
oil was thoroughly mixed and packed. Two types of runs were conducted: a run where
the tetralin and catalyst were mixed within the mixture before packing into the cell, and
the other was conducted by injecting a slug of the tetralin-catalyst solution before
commencing with the steam injection. The Jobo oil used had an oil gravity of 12.4° API
and a viscosity of 7800 cp at 30°C. The injection cell was placed in a vacuum jacket and
set to a reservoir temperature of 50°C. Superheated steam at 273°C was then injected
into the injection cell at a rate of 5.5 cc/min (cold water equivalent). The cell outlet
pressure was maintained at 500 psig. Produced liquid samples were collected
periodically through a series of separators. The produced oil was divided into two halves
and several measurements and analyses were carried out on them. These included
viscosity, density, elemental analysis and liquid composition. Experimental results indicated that tetralin alone was a worthy additive and
increased recovery by 15% compared to that of pure steam. The premixed tetralincatalyst
run showed improved recovery to that of pure steam by 20%. Experiments also
showed that, when the tetralin-catalyst solution was injected rather than mixed, the
results were equivalent to tetralin injection runs. Oil production acceleration was
displayed by all the runs with tetralin and tetralin-catalyst but was more pronounced with
the availability of catalyst.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/86051 |
| Date | 10 October 2008 |
| Creators | Mohammad, Ahmad A A |
| Contributors | Mamora, Daulat D. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, born digital |
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