Experimental investigation of influence of Asphaltene on Gas-Oil miscibility

Between all the EOR techniques developed for the oil reservoirs, carbon dioxide (CO2) flooding has been successful to a large extent under some favorable reservoir conditions. Asphalteneprecipitation is a major technical concern in CO2 flooding and has a significant effect on its EOR. This project is only focused on the effects of asphaltene on synthetic oil – CO2 miscibility and their interfacial properties in a wide pressure domain by pendant drop IFT measurement.Previous studies do not isolated the effect of asphaltene on the slope change and their mutual roles are not clarified. Therefore, in this study, the effect of asphaltene on gas-oil miscibility and the VIT curves are studied and their interfacial properties in a wide pressure domain are checkedby pendant drop IFT measurement. In this experimental work, synthetic oil composed of pure hydrocarbon liquids and extracted asphaltene was used and the effects of asphaltene on interfacial properties are determined carefully. By evaluating the result of pure samples, It isfound that the measured equilibrium IFT reduced linearly with pressure for asphaltene free solvents (both pure and mixtures), without any deviation from the straight line trend.

Keywords:

Minimum miscibility pressure , interfacial tension , asphaltene precipitation , asphaltene deposition