Development and application of a 3D, fully compositional, thermal reservoir simulator

The robustness and speed of a flash-calculation algorithm is very important for compositional and compositional thermal reservoir simulation. The two-phase vapor/liquid equilibrium flash calculation algorithm is well developed, but two-phase liquid/liquid equilibrium and three-phase vapor/liquid/liquid equilibrium flash calculation algorithms are not well developed. In this study, a new and robust algorithm for water/oil/gas multiphase flash calculation is developed. Comparisons with experimental data and simulation results from commercial software validate the new algorithm. Also, the new algorithm is used to study water/hydrocarbon mutual solubility effect that is generally ignored in petroleum industry practice.; It is unknown how much the water-in-oil solubility effect will influence oil recovery in steam injection processes. In this work, a 3D, fully implicit, fully compositional, thermal reservoir simulator is developed. The simulator considers water/hydrocarbon mutual solubility and is used to evaluate the effect of water-in-oil solubility on oil production in steam-injection processes. Simulation results show that effect of water-in-oil solubility increases oil recovery in both steam huff ‘n’ puff and steamflooding processes.; The new flash calculation algorithm is useful to both petroleum engineering and chemical engineering applications. The reservoir simulator can be widely used to study production mechanisms in steam-injection processes. Also, with some modifications, the reservoir simulator should be capable of modeling gas production from natural gas hydrates accumulations.