Dispersion of Butane in Vapex: The Effect of Drainage Height

摘要

In this work, the dispersion of butane in heavy oil and bitumen is experimentally determined during the Vapexprocess with varying drainage heights. The experiments were performed at room temperature (22oC) using butane assolvent at the dew point pressure. We used cylindrical models with different heights varying from 15 to 45 cm, packedwith uniform mixture of heavy oil and glass beads. From the experiments, production rate dependency towards thedrainage height is evaluated along with determination of butane gas solubility, live oil density, and viscosity. Conjugategradient method is used to optimally determine concentration dependent dispersion coefficient as well as the solventconcentration at the solvent–oil interface by matching up experimental live oil production rates with ones predicted bymodel. A computational algorithm is developed to simultaneously solve process models of different heights, andoptimally determine the corresponding dispersion coefficients.