Mechanistic study of CO2 flooding of asphaltenic oil reservoir

Abstract

Carbon dioxide (CO2) injection is one of the most common enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques to increase the oil production. CO2 is injected into the reservoir to displace the residual oil left and mobilize the oil to production wellbore. However, CO2 injection may trigger asphaltene precipitation. Three major factors affecting asphaltene precipitation are pressure, temperature and composition.

Influences of pressure drop on asphaltene precipitation, to our knowledge, has less attention as additional factor that play roles in precipitated asphaltene.

The main objective of this study is to investigate the effect of pressure drop on asphaltene precipitation. The investigation is done at laboratory for different flowing pressure and temperature. It is shown that higher pressure drop gives higher amount of asphaltene precipitation. When comparing to the effect of flowing pressure, it is interesting to see the pressure drop affects asphaltene precipitation but not the flowing pressure.