Research on Heavy Oil Characterization, Production and Processing

Research on Heavy Oil Characterization, Production and Processing

Technical Presentation by the Department of Petroleum Engineering

Date & Time: Wednesday, April 6, 2022, 11:30AM CST

Zoom Link: https://und.zoom.us/j/2321594415

Presenter: Prof. M. R. Riazi

Prof. M. R. Riazi (PhD, AIChE Fellow, P.Eng.) has over 40 years of experience in both industry and academia working on projects related to chemical EOR, modeling and simulation of petroleum reservoirs, refining processes, flow assurance and solid deposition, phase behavior and property estimation, characterization methods, heavy oil processing and recovery. He received both PhD and MSc degrees in chemical engineering from Pennsylvania State University where he also worked as a faculty member in chemical engineering with projects sponsored by API and US DOE. He has held university faculty chair and visiting positions (both in chemical and petroleum engineering departments) in the US, Europe, Middle East and Kuwait.  He also has been a consultant for oil and energy related companies worldwide. The methods he has developed for the characterization and properties of petroleum mixtures have been included in the API Technical books and many process/reservoir simulators. He has extensively presented at international conferences and has been invited speaker to conduct workshops for the petroleum and energy related industry in more than 40 countries. He is currently the CEO of Montreal Oil & Gas, Inc, a consulting firm based in Montreal, Canada as well as director of fuels division of AIChE and chair of FPD group in the AIChE Annual Meetings. He is the founding editor and editor in chief of IJOGCT journal, a board member of JPSE with some 150 publications and written more than half a dozen books in various areas of oil, gas, coal and biofuel production and processing technology published by ASTM and Taylor & Francis. He has received a Diploma of Honor from American Petroleum Engineering Society for his outstanding contributions to the petroleum industry and is an elected fellow of AIChE. He is a registered and licensed professional engineer in Ontario, Canada. More information can be found at his website: www.riazim.com

Abstract

The purpose of this webinar is to present an overview of my research over the past three decades in the areas of heavy oil characterization, properties, production and processing. In this talk we will show how chemical engineering principles such as statistical thermodynamics, phase equilibrium and mass transfer fundamentals can be used to characterize hydrocarbons and to develop generalized methods for prediction of properties of hydrocarbons and their mixtures as well as development of new techniques for measurement of transport properties of undefined complex mixtures and heavy oil at elevated pressures.

While these methods may be applied to any fluids, but in this presentation application of the techniques are demonstrated in some examples such as:

• Importance of characterization methods in heavy oil recovery and residue upgrading processing
• Determination of equations of state parameters from minimum laboratory data for prediction of thermodynamic and physical properties of fluids and fluid mixtures,
• Characterization and property estimation of heavy crude oil and residues
• Use of speeds of light and sound in prediction of properties and phase behavior of fluids
• To select a right thermodynamic model in a process simulator for design and operation of processing units
• To predict products quality in a hydrocarbon cracking unit from feed and operating conditions
• To determine rate of dissolution of injected gas in a reservoir for heavy oil recovery and CO2 sequestration
• To determine fate of an oil spill floating on seawater
• Asphaltene phase diagram and a comprehensive predictive 2D model for deposition in wellbores
• Software development and demonstration of a software for asphaltene deposition
• A brief introduction to some other topics as potential areas for collaboration including: wax, hydrate and scale deposition, optimization tools for EOR scheduling and production injection scheduling module. Research on biofuels production processes and properties.