Investigation of asphaltene precipitation in miscible gas injection processes: experimental study and modeling

• Main Authors: S. Moradi, M. Dabiri, B. Dabir, D. Rashtchian, M. A. Emadi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Brazilian Society of Chemical Engineering 2012-09-01
• Series: Brazilian Journal of Chemical Engineering
• Subjects: Nitrogen injection; Asphaltene precipitation; Pure solid modeling; Scaling equation
• Online Access: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-66322012000300022

Asphaltene precipitation during natural depletion and miscible gas injection is a common problem in oilfields throughout the world. In this work, static precipitation tests are conducted to investigate the effects of pressure, temperature and gas type and concentration on asphaltene instability. Three different oil samples have been studied under reservoir conditions with/without nitrogen and methane injection. Besides applying common thermodynamic models, a new scaling equation is presented to predict asphaltene precipitation under HPHT gas injection. Extensive published data from the literature are also used in model development. The scaling approach is attractive because it is simple and complex asphaltene properties are not involved in the calculations. Moreover, the proposed model provides universal parameters for different fluid samples over a wide range of pressure and temperature that makes it novel for evaluation of future gas injection projects when simple PVT data are available.