The Upper Devonian Grosmont reservoir in Alberta, Canada, is the single largest carbonate bitumen reservoir in the world, with an estimated 400 billion barrels of bitumen in place. The Grosmont bitumen formed from light crude oil via extensive biodegradation, which produced extremely
high in-situ viscosities of >1 million cP. Forty nine samples from fifteen wells were selected for rheological behavior, viscosity, and biodegradation pattern analysis. In addition, various methods of viscosity determination
were compared.
Results indicate that the Grosmont bitumen is essentially a non-Newtonian fluid at in-situ conditions, exhibiting a distinctive shear-thinning behavior at T < 40C. Neglecting this character will cause inaccurate viscosity measurements. The viscosity variations in the Grosmont reservoir are cyclic with depth and are stratigraphically controlled. The
bitumen exhibits 3 levels of biodegradation. Biodegradation parameters from hopanes and tricyclic terpanes may potentially be used for bitumen quality prediction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:AEU.10048/655 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Zhao, Yi |
| Contributors | Machel, Hans G. (Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), Machel, Hans G. (Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), Pemberton, George (Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences), Foght, Julia (Department of Biological Sciences) |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 7390315 bytes, application/pdf |
| Relation | http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/abstracts/html/2008/gia/abstracts/zhao.htm, http://www.searchanddiscovery.net/abstracts/html/2009/annual/abstracts/zhao.htm, http://www.geoconvention.org/2009abstracts/224.pdf |
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