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A New Model for Solution Gas Drive in Heavy Oils
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, ECMOR X - 10th European Conference on the Mathematics of Oil Recovery, Sep 2006, cp-23-00063
- ISBN: 978-90-73781-47-4
Abstract
We introduce a new Darcy scale model in which the permeability of the gas phase is replaced by a new expression for the gas phase velocity. When the bubbles are smaller that a critical radius, capillary forces anchor the bubbles and the gas phase does not move. Above the critical radius the bubbles move at a velocity of the same order as the liquid phase velocity. <br>The number of bubbles per unit volume may vary through coalescence between neighboring bubbles. The coalescence rate is an important parameter in the model. When coalescence is fast, the bubbles reach rapidly a large size at which they become mobile. The dependence of the coalescence rate on the fluid parameters and the bubble size is discussed. <br><br>The predictions of the model are then compared to several laboratory scale experiments. <br>