Prediction of Gas Injection Effect on Asphaltene Precipitation Onset using the Cubic and Cubic-Plus-Association Equations of State

Gas injection is a proven enhanced oil recovery technique. The gas injection changes the reservoir oil composition, temperature and pressure conditions, which may result in asphaltene precipitation. In this work, we have used a modeling approach from the literature in order to predict asphaltene precipitation onset condition during gas injection.

The modeling approach is used with the Soave-Redlich-Kwong (SRK), Soave-Redlich-Kwong-Plus-Huron-Vidal mixing rule (SRK+HV) and Cubic-Plus-Association (CPA) equations of state (EoS). Six different reservoir fluids are studied with respect to asphaltene onset precipitation during nitrogen, hydrocarbon gas mixture and carbon dioxide injection.

It is also shown how to extend the modeling approach when the reservoir fluid is split into multiple pseudo-components. It is observed that the modeling approach using any of the three models can predict the gas injection effect on asphaltene onset conditions. The CPA EoS is more reliable than the other two models, which are sensitive to asphaltene molecular weight and sometimes predict highly non-linear behavior outside the experimental temperature range used for fitting the model parameters.