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.
Recommended Citation
Saikia, Bikash Deep., "Surfactant-induced flow behavior effects in gas condensate reservoirs" (2010). LSU Master's Theses. 3101.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/3101
Committee Chair
Rao, Dandina N.
DOI
10.31390/gradschool_theses.3101