Heating oil sand and effects on the interlayers

ABSTRACT

The condition of oil sand may change and produce new fractures at high temperature. However, the changing process of oil sand and its characteristics is not clear enough and still lacks certain experiments. Therefore, a new experiment is operated to study oil sand and its interlayers at high temperature. It is found that when the temperature reaches 180°C at first, fractures can be seen obviously along oil sand interlayers. After the oil sand is cooled and heated again, more cracks are produced vertical to the original fracture at 160°C. Different thicknesses and different lithologies are tested to produce cracks at different temperatures (100°C, 200°C, and 300°C). Cracks are produced suddenly when certain temperature thresholds are reached. These data are useful to study the heating process of oil sand in heavy oil reservoirs.

KEYWORDS:

• Cracks
• heating experiment
• heavy oil
• numerical simulation
• oil sand