Comprehensive experimental and numerical modeling of petroleum products

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The evolution of human civilization is synonymous with how it meets its energy needs. Few would dispute the human race has become progressively more civilized with time. This would mean less energy is required per capita to sustain life today than, say, 50 years ago. Unfortunately, exactly the opposite has happened. Whereas we used to know that resources were infinite, and human needs finite, today we are told: resources are finite, human needs are infinite. What's going on? The proposed research is aimed at answering this fundamental question. Taking up petroleum fluids as its principal topic, the research focuses on rendering petroleum operations sustainable, and proposes to overcome the following difficulties: 1) insufficient description of solid/liquid interaction, particularly under thermal constraints; 2) casting of rock and fluid data on 'ideal' models (non-existent in nature); and 3) linearization of governing equations that are inherently non-linear. An experimental program will be developed to eliminate some shortcomings in existing laboratory techniques commonly used in petroleum research. Instead of fitting (or retrofitting) to an 'ideal' model (even after revisions to include 'non-ideality'), newly developed mathematical models that emulate natural phenomena will be fed these experimental results. These models will be a continuous function of time - the most important feature of a natural phenomenon, and included in a comprehensive mass, momentum, and energy balance equation. Techniques recently developed (and published) by the applicant will be used to solve the resulting non-linear equations. These methods do not employ linearization and solve problems with the provision of tracking multiple solutions. The resulting numerical models will become valuable tools for prediction of petroleum reservoir performance under various recovery schemes. This feature will be demonstrated through scaling up results and comparing with conventional simulators. Owing to its closer-to-reality predictions alone, this feature should translate into millions of dollars in savings. This study has the potential of revolutionizing engineering practices, particularly in the petroleum sector.