Identifier

etd-11112010-214621

Degree

Master of Science in Petroleum Engineering (MSPE)

Department

Petroleum Engineering

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Natural gas, which accounts for a quarter of world’s energy, has been a major energy source because of its abundance and less impact on environment. With explorations at higher depth, pressure and temperature, the share of gas condensate reservoirs to global gas production is increasing. A unique production challenge associated with these reservoirs is the condensate blockage problem, which is the buildup of condensate liquid saturation around wellbore as a result of drawdown below dew point pressure. Mitigation of this problem requires in depth understanding of the multiphase flow of liquid and gas. Surfactants are well known in the literature for affecting such multiphase flow characteristics in reservoirs. They affect the flow behavior primarily by wettability alteration as well as spreading coefficient modification. In this study, multiphase flow characteristics of gas condensates, with and without surfactants were observed by running corefloods representing actual reservoir retrograde condensation phenomena. A commercial anionic surfactant, Alfoterra® 123-4S, was successfully shown to facilitate condensate removal with relative permeability enhancement of over 17 percent at a surfactant concentration of 2000 ppm, which was also the optimum concentration under the flowing conditions. The efficacy of surfactant was observed to be a non-linear function of its concentration and this is attributed mainly to the pleateauing effect above the critical micellar concentration (CMC) values.

Date

2010

Document Availability at the Time of Submission

Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Committee Chair

Rao, Dandina N.

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_theses.3101

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