Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Thin net pay heavy oil reservoirs are less attractive for SAGD because of the reduced economics and increased environmental footprints. VAPEX, similar to SAGD, but using solvent to reduce the oil viscosity, has been proposed to produce thin net pay heavy oil reservoirs in an environmentally sustainable way. This study will integrate 1-D, 2-D and 3-D physical and mathematical modeling studies to intensively present and model the mechanisms of solvent injection in heavy oil reservoirs, to optimize solvent injection processes, and eventually to enhance the oil production efficiency. Experimental study will be conducted to measure the three main mechanisms involved in solvent injection processes: molecular diffusion/dispersion, viscosity fingering and non-equilibrium phase behavior. A novel semi-analytical approach developed by the applicant will be applied to improve the mathematical modeling in order to more accurately predict the performance of solvent injection in heavy oil reservoirs and reduce the uncertainty of heavy oil reservoir development plan. With the improved simulation and 3-D physical modeling studies, the following technologies will be developed and validated to improve the efficiency of solvent injection process in thin net pay heavy oil reservoirs: (1) Approaches, e.g. electrical heating, to improve horizontal well conformance; (2) Optimized well pattern, e.g. Tee-well pattern or multi-lateral wellbores, and optimized solvent injection strategy; (3) solvent trapping technologies to reduce solvent oil ratio. The upscaling approaches will also be developed to scale up the laboratory results to field scale. This work is an important step to achieve our long-term objective, which is to develop ""green"" technologies for the next generations as well as train them on how to generate knowledge and be creative. To meet the objective, a reservoir physical and mathematical modeling group will be established. This group will have the capacity to train six undergraduate students, six master students and three PhD students simultaneously. This will help Canada remain the leadership in sustainable energy technology development and education.