Abstract: The United States is now energy self-sufficient due to the production of shale oil reserves. With more than half of it being tapped daily in the United States, these unconventional reserves are massive and provide immense potential for future energy demands. Drilling horizontal wells and fracking are the primary methods for developing these reserves. Regrettably, recovery efficiency is rarely greater than 10%. Gas injection enhanced oil recovery offers a significant benefit in optimizing recovery of shale oil. This could be either through huff and puff, gas flooding, and cyclic gas injection. Methane, nitrogen, and carbon (IV) oxide, among other high-pressure gases, can be injected. Operators use Darcy's law to assess a reservoir's productive capacity, but they are unaware that the law may not apply to shale oil reserves. This is due to the fact that, unlike pressure differences alone, diffusion, concentration, and gas selection all play a role in the flow of gas injected into the wellbore. The reservoir drainage and oil sweep efficiency rates are determined by the transport method. This research evaluates the parameters that influence gas injection transport mechanism. Understanding the process could accelerate recovery by two to three times.
Abstract: Gas lift is one of the most common forms of artificial lift, particularly for offshore wells because of its relative down hole simplicity, flexibility, reliability, and ability to operate over a large range of rates and occupy very little space at the well head. Presently, petroleum industry is investing in exploration and development fields in offshore locations where oil and gas wells are being drilled thousands of feet below the ocean in high pressure and temperature conditions. Therefore, gas-lifted oil wells are capable of failure through gas lift valves which are considered as the heart of the gas lift system for controlling the amount of the gas inside the tubing string. The gas injection rate through gas lift valve must be controlled to be sufficient to obtain and maintain critical flow, also, gas lift valves must be designed not only to allow gas passage through it and prevent oil passage, but also for gas injection into wells to be started and stopped when needed. In this paper, smart gas lift valve has been used to investigate the effect of the valve port size, depth of injection and vertical lift performance on well productivity; all these aspects have been investigated using PROSPER simulator program coupled with experimental data. The results show that by using smart gas lift valve, the gas injection rate can be controlled which leads to improved flow performance.
Abstract: Gas lift optimization is becoming more important now a day in petroleum industry. A proper lift optimization can reduce the operating cost, increase the net present value (NPV) and maximize the recovery from the asset. A widely accepted definition of gas lift optimization is to obtain the maximum output under specified operating conditions. In addition, gas lift, a costly and indispensable means to recover oil from high depth reservoir entails solving the gas lift optimization problems. Gas lift optimization is a continuous process; there are two levels of production optimization. The total field optimization involves optimizing the surface facilities and the injection rate that can be achieved by standard tools softwares. Well level optimization can be achieved by optimizing the well parameters such as point of injection, injection rate, and injection pressure. All these aspects have been investigated and presented in this study by using experimental data and PROSPER simulation program. The results show that the well head pressure has a large influence on the gas lift performance and also proved that smart gas lift valve can be used to improve gas lift performance by controlling gas injection from down hole. Obtaining the optimum gas injection rate is important because excessive gas injection reduces production rate and consequently increases the operation cost.
Abstract: Permeability reduction induced by asphaltene
precipitation during gas injection is one of the serious problems in
the oil industry. This problem can lead to formation damage and
decrease the oil production rate. In this work, Malaysian light oil
sample has been used to investigate the effect CO2 injection and
Water Alternating Gas (WAG) injection on permeability reduction.
In this work, dynamic core flooding experiments were conducted to
study the effect of CO2 and WAG injection on the amount of
asphaltene precipitated. Core properties after displacement were
inspected for any permeability reduction to study the effect of
asphaltene precipitation on rock properties.
The results showed that WAG injection gave less asphaltene
precipitation and formation damage compared to CO2 injection. The
study suggested that WAG injection can be one of the important
factors of managing asphaltene precipitation.
Abstract: Nanocrystalline thin film of Na0.1V2O5.nH2O xerogel
obtained by sol gel synthesis was used as gas sensor. Gas sensing
properties of different gases such as hydrogen, petroleum and
humidity were investigated. Applying XRD and TEM the size of the
nanocrystals is found to be 7.5 nm. SEM shows a highly porous
structure with submicron meter-sized voids present throughout the
sample. FTIR measurement shows different chemical groups
identifying the obtained series of gels. The sample was n-type
semiconductor according to the thermoelectric power and electrical
conductivity. It can be seen that the sensor response curves from
130oC to 150oC show a rapid increase in sensitivity for all types of
gas injection, low response values for heating period and the rapid
high response values for cooling period. This result may suggest that
this material is able to act as gas sensor during the heating and
cooling process.
Abstract: Synthesis gas manufacturing by steam reforming of hydrocarbons is an important industrial process. High endothermic nature of the process makes it one of the most cost and heat intensive processes. In the present work, composite effect of different inert gases on synthesis gas yield, feed gas conversion and temperature distribution along the reactor length has been studied using a heterogeneous model. Mathematical model was developed as a first stage and validated against the existing process models. With the addition of inert gases, a higher yield of synthesis gas is observed. Simultaneously the rector outlet temperature drops to as low as 810 K. It was found that Xenon gives the highest yield and conversion while Helium gives the lowest temperature. Using Xenon inert gas 20 percent reduction in outlet temperature was observed compared to traditional case.