The Determination of Effective Diffusivity Coefficients in a Solvent Gas Heavy Oil System for Methane

Abstract

In this investigation, an accurate high pressure and temperature diffusion setup was applied to measure the diffusion coefficients of methane in Iranian heavy oils in presence and absence of porous media by using the pressure-decay method. The solvent diffusivity in heavy oil was determined by both graphical and numerical methods. In addition, the effects of the porous medium and the temperature on the molecular diffusion coefficient of the solvent gas in the liquid phase were discussed and finally, using experimental data, a functionality dependence of molecular diffusivity on temperature and porous medium characteristics was proposed.

Keywords:

• diffusion cell
• diffusion coefficient
• heavy oil
• pressure-decay data
• porous media