The Effect of Carbonyl and Hydroxyl Compounds on Swelling Factor, Interfacial Tension, and Viscosity in CO2 Injection: A Case Study on Aromatic Oils

Abstract

A factor influencing the effectiveness of CO2 injection is miscibility. Besides the miscible injection, CO2 may also contribute to oil recovery improvement by immiscible injection through modifying several properties such as oil swelling, viscosity reduction, and the lowering of interfacial tension (IFT). Moreover, CO2 immiscible injection performance is also expected to be improved by adding some solvent. However, there are a lack of studies identifying the roles of solvent in assisting CO2 injection through observing those properties simultaneously. This paper explains the effects of CO2–carbonyl and CO2–hydroxyl compounds mixture injection on those properties, and also the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) experimentally by using VIPS (refers to viscosity, interfacial tension, pressure–volume, and swelling) apparatus, which has a capability of measuring those properties simultaneously within a closed system. Higher swelling factor, lower viscosity, IFT and MMP are observed from a CO2–propanone/acetone mixture injection. The role of propanone and ethanol is more significant in Sample A1, which has higher molecular weight (MW) of C7+ and lower composition of C1–C4, than that in the other Sample A9. The solvents accelerate the ways in which CO2 dissolves and extracts oil, especially the extraction of the heavier component left in the swelling cell.