Scientists from the Institute of Geology and Petroleum Technologies of Kazan Federal University have developed a catalyst that will simplify the extraction of highly viscous oil. According to the press service of the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia, the catalyst uses salts of weak acids.
The main difficulty faced by oil companies in the development of heavy oil is its high viscosity, due to the high content of resins and asphaltenes. Kazan University is studying catalytic processes for the refining of heavy oil in order to create new field development technologies.
Alexey Vakhin and Yasser Abdelsalam from the "In-situ Combustion" laboratory said that scientists have found out how the composition of heavy oil changes under the combined action of water vapor and carbon dioxide in the presence of water-soluble salts, such as sodium orthovanadate, sodium dihydrogen phosphate, and sodium phosphotungstate.
According to Abdelsalam, the use of weak acid salts accelerated the dehydrogenation, hydrogenation, and isomerization reactions of resins and asphaltenes. This reduced their molecular weight and decreased the viscosity of the oil. Sodium orthovanadate proved to be particularly effective in reducing the content of asphaltenes and viscosity.
Scientists note that the use of this catalyst increased the volume of oil produced by 35%. Viscosity at 20 degrees decreased by 72.8%, and the sulfur content decreased by 41.2%. The study was published in the journal Energy Conversion and Management.
We are now investigating organosoluble and water-soluble compounds containing catalytically active metals. Previously, our laboratory staff created catalytic complexes for in-situ use based on transition metals. They have already been tested in a number of heavy oil fields and have shown high efficiency in increasing oil recovery.
Earlier, Tyumen researchers developed an innovative method that accelerates and increases the extraction of highly viscous oil from horizontal wells. Their new model determines the optimal algorithm for using hot steam to heat the oil reservoir, which makes the extraction process more efficient and economical.
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