Measurements and Modelling of Phase Behaviour and Viscosity of a Heavy Oil/Butane System

Solvent-based heavy oil recovery methods are of interest as environmentally friendly alternatives for thermal techniques. The phase behaviour data from a heavy oil/solvent system are important information required for feasibility studies and numerical simulation of such processes. The scarcity of experimental data in the literature is a challenge in modelling of solvent involving processes. The variety of the solvent/oil mixtures, which are being evaluated within ongoing researches such as the VAPEX (vapour extraction of heavy oil) process, requires accurate description of the system's pressure, volume and temperature (PVT) properties. In this study, an experimental setup was designed to perform a series of PVT experiments and viscosity measurements. The results of the PVT tests conducted with the Frog Lake heavy oil and butane as a solvent are presented. The same oil/solvent pair was used in the VAPEX experiments previously reported by the authors((1, 2)). The measurements include the solvent solubility in the oil, Mixture density and mixture viscosity at different saturation pressures. To simulate the phase behaviour of the system, an equation of state (EOS) was tuned using the measured experimental data and a phase behaviour package (WINPROP). The predicted densities and saturation pressures by the EOS are in very good agreement with the experimental data. A mixing viscosity correlation was also tuned with the measured data and found to be representative for describing the viscosity of the system. The viscosity data were compared with the predictions of several other available correlations, and it was shown that Shu's model((3)) reproduces acceptable data for reservoir simulation purposes.