An Experimental and Simulation Study of Heavy Oil Recovery by the Liquid CO₂ Huff and Puff Method

Abstract

In this article a series of experiments were performed to demonstrate the effect of carbon dioxide injection pressure on a huff and puff process. The experimental data are used in a lab-scale model simulated with a commercial simulator to investigate the effect of soaking time, injection pore volume, and rate of injection on the heavy oil recovery. The result of experiments showed that a huff and puff process under miscible pressure conditions gives the most recovery. Simulation results illustrated that there is an optimum value for soaking time, which, for soaking times less than this value, recovery increases and for values greater than optimum the recovery decreases. The simulation study demonstrated that oil recovery increases with increasing volume of injected miscible fluid and recovery decreases with injection rate increase.

Keywords::

• heavy oil
• huff and puff
• liquid CO₂ injection
• simulation
• soak time

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Petroleum Research Center of Tehran, Petroleum University of Technology, for permission to use experimental apparatus.