Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS) is widely used as a primary non-thermal production technique in thin heavy oil reservoirs. Development of the complex wormhole networks (i.e., high-permeability channels caused by sand production) renders the scalability of post-CHOPS solvent-aided processes to field applications challenging. It is widely accepted that configuration of wormhole...
Water is the most predominant component in steam injection processes, such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD). The main hypothesis in this research is that in-situ oil transport can be substantially enhanced by generating oil-in-water emulsion, where the water-continuous phase acts as an effective oil carrier. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the capability of oil-in-water...
An important and largely unsolved problem is accurate prediction of the onset of precipitation of heavy organic compounds, such as asphalts, on the surface of the pores of a porous medium, such as oil reservoir. It was suggested some time ago that an effective method of identifying the onset may be through measuring the electrical conductivity of the solution that contains the heavy organic...
Steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is the main technologically and economically feasible method for in situ bitumen extraction. While SAGD is effective, the steam generation process is a major source of CO2 emissions, and many strategies are currently under test to improve both the environmental and economic performance. Solvent-based processes – either pure solvent injection or...
