Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 173 (2019) 630–639

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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/petrol

Modeling of formation damage due to asphaltene deposition in near T

wellbore region using a cylindrical compositional simulator
Marzieh Ghadimi, Mohammad J. Amani∗, Mojtaba Ghaedi, Mohammad R. Malayeri
Department of Petroleum Engineering, School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Shiraz University, Iran

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Asphaltene deposition in surface facilities, wellbore and near wellbore region poses a chronic problem during oil
Asphaltene production processes. It reduces permeability significantly by blocking pore throats as well as wettability al-
Deposition teration toward oil-wet. In this study, near wellbore damage due to asphaltene deposition is addressed. A nu-
Compositional model merical approach has been followed to investigate the impacts of asphaltene deposition in near wellbore region
Near wellbore
using an Iranian crude oil sample. An IMPEC (Implicit Pressure and Explicit Compositions) compositional si-
Simulation
mulator has been developed in cylindrical coordinates. Three mechanisms of asphaltene damage including
porosity reduction, permeability reduction and wettability alteration are taken into account, and the impact of
each mechanism is individually discerned. It is assumed precipitated asphaltene is a pure dense liquid and it is
determined by LLE calculation using PR-EoS. The reduction in permeability is correlated with porosity reduction
using a power law relation. To model wettability alteration, instantaneous wettability dependent properties
(relative permeability, capillary pressure and residual saturations) are determined by a weight averaging be-
tween before/after deposition state. By assuming porous media is a bundle of capillary tubes, a weight factor is
suggested which is sensitive to asphaltene particle size and their orientation on the surface and calculated
dynamically during the simulation. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is done to investigate the effect of model
parameters. It is found that the wettability alteration is the main cause for the reduced production rate.
Wettability alteration could reduce oil production even up to several times more than porosity and permeability
reduction. The results also reveal that at early time of production, most deposition occurs in the vicinity of the
well but as time elapses, the maximum deposition point expands gradually to farther areas from the wellbore.

1. Introduction In a number of researches it is assumed that precipitated asphaltene

Asphaltenes are large molecular size polycyclic aromatics, which
may also include nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and metal elements such as
nickel and vanadium (Nasrabadi et al., 2016). Although the asphaltene
structure is not adequately known, some representative models were
suggested in the literature (Altamirano et al., 1986; Groenzin and
Mullins, 2000; Strausz et al., 1992). To deal with the asphaltene pro-
blems, industry so far has tried possibilities such as manipulation of
operating condition, well intervention, workover, chemical treatment
and mechanical cleaning methods. Nonetheless in severe cases re-
mediation technics do not work properly, and it eventually leads to well
shut down. During primary production and EOR processes, any change
in pressure, temperature and composition may result in asphaltene
precipitation. The precipitated asphaltene can deposit anywhere in the
reservoir, wellbore, separators and any other production equipment
and causes operational and economic drawbacks.
would immediately deposit on pore surface and does not flow in the
reservoir (Fazelipour et al., 2008; Gonzalez Abad, 2013; Qin, 1998; Qin
et al., 2000), but the opposite has also been reported (Nghiem et al.,
2000). A fraction of precipitated asphaltene would be adsorbed on the
active sites of surface due to formation-oil interactions or stops behind
the throats. Continuous adsorption of asphaltene particles on pore
surfaces narrows the pores. As a result, higher velocity, whenever it
goes beyond a critical velocity, can remove deposited asphaltene from
the surface (Gruesbeck and Collins, 1982).
The development of reservoir simulators with the capability of
modeling the asphaltene precipitation, deposition and reduction in
porosity and permeability were carried out before by several re-
searchers (Darabi, 2014; Fazelipour et al., 2008; Kohse and Nghiem,
2004; Wang, 2000; Wang and Civan, 2001). Nonetheless, asphaltene
deposition which principally can also change the wettability of rock
surface toward oil-wet (Akhlaq et al., 1996; Crocker and Marchin,

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: amanimei@ualberta.ca (M.J. Amani).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2018.10.058
Received 3 July 2018; Received in revised form 15 October 2018; Accepted 17 October 2018
Available online 22 October 2018
0920-4105/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
M. Ghadimi et al.
1988; González and Moreira, 1991; Leontaritis and Mansoori, 1988),
has received less attention. Darabi et al. (2012) presented a model for
wettability alteration and implemented it into UTCOMP. They defined
ASI (asphaltene stability index) as the difference between the fugacities
of asphaltene and heaviest component in oil and stated that as ASI
changes, then the formation contact angle would also change. For new
contact angle, capillary pressure and relative permeability are updated.
They concluded that the wettability alteration reduces cumulative oil
production especially when water film is unstable (Darabi et al., 2012).
Mohebbinia (2013) adopted a model to evaluate asphaltene induced
wettability alteration. The model was originally presented at first by
Delshad et al. for surfactant and alkali-induced wettability alteration
(Delshad et al., 1996).
To predict the amount of precipitated asphaltene, one needs to de-
termine asphaltene phase behavior. Various thermodynamic models are
proposed in the literature to calculate asphaltene precipitation. A few
publications considered a colloidal behavior and irreversible pre-
cipitation for asphaltene particles (Abedini et al., 2011; Peramanu
et al., 2001; Pfeiffer and Saal, 1940), while others addressed reversi-
bility of asphaltene precipitation (Aske et al., 2002; Hammami et al.,
2000; Hirschberg et al., 1984; Pedersen et al., 2014; Rassamdana et al.,
1996). Reversibility of asphaltene precipitation is the base of solubility
model of Flory-Huggins, solid model (cubic equation of state) and
dense-liquid models (cubic equation of state, CPA and PC-SAFT EOSs)
(Li and Firoozabadi, 2010). Non-cubic equations of state such as CPA
and PC-SAFT are used in multicomponent multiphase compositional
models for asphaltene precipitation (Mohebbinia, 2013; Nasrabadi
et al., 2013). The application of these equations with their complex
calculations takes much more computational efforts. Yan et al. (2011)
discussed on the applicability of non-cubic equations of state in com-
positional reservoir simulators. Among the attempted simulation cases,
minimum simulation time ratio of PC-SAFT to SRK was obtained
around three. Another problem they addressed was about C7 + char-
acterization for PC-SAFT (Yan et al., 2011). Abouie et al. (2017) per-
formed a comparative study and concluded solid model using a cubic
EoS can reproduce asphaltene precipitation data with the same accu-
racy as the PC-SAFT model. It was though noted that the PC-SAFT
model matches experimental data more convenient, and in the cases
with lack of experimental data PC-SAFT predicts asphaltene behavior
better than cubic EoS (Abouie et al., 2017).
In this research, a crude oil sample from one of Iranian oil field is
characterized and its precipitation at static condition is predicted using
PR EoS. The precipitation and deposition models are then implemented
into a cylindrical compositional simulator to investigate asphaltene
deposition effects on a single well performance. Cylindrical coordinate
is chosen because it is preferred for developing a numerical algorithm
in a single well (Abdollah Pour, 2011). The precipitated asphaltene is
also considered as an individual phase which can move into porous
media along to other phases. Wettability alteration, porosity and per-
meability reduction due to asphaltene deposition are then modeled
dynamically.
2. Model description
2.1. Asphaltene precipitation
To facilitate precipitation calculations, precipitated asphaltene is
considered as a pure liquid phase (Pedersen et al., 2014). Flash calcu-
lation here is a sequence of VLE and LLE calculations (Burke et al.,
1990; Hirschberg et al., 1984; Nor-Azlan and Adewumi, 1993). Al-
though a three-phase phase flash calculation is more accurate and
realistic (Mohebbinia, 2013), but it requires more computational efforts
(Gonzalez Abad, 2013). At the first step of flash calculations, stability
analysis is performed (Michelsen, 1982) to determines whether gas
appears or not. If it is detected that reservoir fluid splits into two
phases, then VLE calculations are followed, thus:
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 173 (2019) 630–639
lnfio = lnfig i = 1, …, nc − 1 (1)
Where fio and fig are component fugacity in oil and gas phases, and nc is
number of hydrocarbon components. It is assumed that asphaltene
component does not appear in the vapor phase. Thus Equation (1) ex-
presses components fugacity equality constraint in oil and gas phases
for hydrocarbon components except asphaltene. At the next stage, the
appearance of second liquid phase in the vapor/liquid system or single
phase liquid system, is investigated. The condition of asphaltene pre-
cipitation is as follow:
fnc, o > fnc (2)
fnc, o is asphaltene fugacity in oil phase and fnc is the pure asphaltene
fugacity. If the above equation is satisfied, then the amount of pre-
cipitation is determined by the use of LLE calculations. For LLE calcu-
lations, it is assumed that second liquid phase is pure asphaltene. The
governing equation of phase equilibrium is:
lnfnc, o = lnfnc (3)
Equation (3) denotes asphaltene fugacity equality in oil phase and
second liquid phase at equilibrium. The fugacity of each component is
calculated by Peng-Robinson EoS (Peng and Robinson, 1976). The
general procedure of equilibrium calculations is shown in Fig. 1.
2.2. Asphaltene deposition
As asphaltene phase is precipitad, it can partially flow with the
reservoir fluid and partially deposit on the rock surface (Nghiem et al.,
2000). The amount of deposited asphaltene which occurs through three
mechanisms of surface deposition, pore throats plugging and entrain-
ment of deposited particles is calculated by following equation (Wang
and Civan, 2001):
dVdep
= αC ∅ − βVdep (vo − vcr , o) + γuo C
dt (4)
dVdep
is rate of deposition. Vdep denotes volume of deposited asphaltene
dt
per grid block volume. The first term of the above equation represents
surface deposition rate. α is surface deposition rate coefficient, C is
volumetric concentration of precipitated asphaltene and ∅ is porosity.
The second one is entrainment of deposited asphaltenes by oil flow
which have a velocity more than critical velocity, where β is entrain-
ment coefficient. vo is oil phase interstitial velocity and vcr,o is oil phase
critical interstitial velocity. This term is ignored, if the velocity is not
large enough to dislodge asphaltene particles from the surface. Plugging
of pore throats by particles with a radius more than throat radius is
calculated by the third term. Here u o is Darcy velocity of oil phase. The
instantaneous plugging deposition rate coefficient (γ) is calculated as
follows:
γ= γi (1 + σVdep) (5)
Where γi is instantaneous plugging deposition rate coefficient, and σ is
snow-ball effect constant. For small particles which can pass through
throats easily, γ get a zero value (Wang and Civan, 2001).
Instantaneous porosity is calculated as:
∅ = ∅0 − Vdep (6)
After deposition, porosity reduction only depends on volume of
deposited asphaltene, but permeability reduction also depends on
where deposits sit e.g. pluggable pores. Therefore, permeability af-
fected more than porosity. To apply this tougher effect, it is suggested
to correlate permeability to porosity using a power law with exponent c
(Acock, 1994)
k ∅
c
=⎛ ⎞ ⎜ ⎟
k0 ⎝ ∅0 ⎠ (7)
Where ∅ and k are respectively porosity and absolute permeability, and
M. Ghadimi et al.
Fig. 1. Algorithm of phase behavior calculations.
Vdep is volume of deposited asphaltene. The exponent c sets as an ad-
justable parameter. The zero index corresponds to initial condition.
2.3. Wettability alteration model
Another aspect of asphaltene induced formation damage is surface
wettability alteration which restricts oil movement. Wettability al-
teration, in this study, is considered a simple interpolation between two
extreme states similar to surfactant and alkali-induced wettability al-
teration (Delshad et al., 1996). Extreme states are before asphaltene
deposition state and more oil wet state after asphaltene deposition.
Relative permeability, capillary pressure and residual saturations are
calculated as follow:
kr = Fkrf + (1 − F ) kri (8)
Pc = FPcf + (1 − F ) Pci (9)
Socr = FSocrf + (1 − F ) Socri (10)
Swcr = FSwcrf + (1 − F ) Swcri
(11)
Where subscript i refers to initial state and subscript f corresponds to
final state (after deposition state), and ‘F’ is weight factor in this weight
averaging. Modeling of wettability alteration by this approach was
done before but there, it was expected that weight factor ‘F’ vs. amount
of asphaltene deposition be imported by the user (Eclipse). In what
follows, it is explained that how weight factor ‘F’ with a simple and
obvious interpretation has been related to the amount of asphaltene
envelopment on the porous media surface, so the simulator could cal-
culate it dynamically. ‘F’ is defined as:
Sasp
F=
Spore (12)
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 173 (2019) 630–639
Where Sasp indicates the surface which deposited asphaltene covers and
Spore is area of pores. ‘F’ may exceed unity because of multilayer ad-
sorption (Jafari Behbahani et al., 2013). In this case, ‘F’ is taken as unit.
This can be interpreted as only first asphaltene layer changes wett-
ability so then the next layers almost do not play any role in wettability
alteration. Although the real mechanism of wettability alteration due to
asphaltene deposition is still not known, here a hypothetical structure is
just considered to calculate Sasp which needs more experimental evi-
dences. Sasp depends on amount of asphaltene deposition, asphaltene
molecules area and the spatial configuration of molecules on pore
surface. Asphaltene molecules may lie on surface vertically or hor-
izontally (Speight, 1999) and also they may sit on molecules which
already deposited on pore surface (Jafari Behbahani et al., 2013). The
surface occupied by molecules in a vertical position against those in a
horizontal position is negligible and also molecules placed on former
deposited molecules instead of sticking to formation surface do not
affect wettability and in calculation of Sasp are not considered. Here
parameter ‘a’ is introduced to account this point of view. This is named
as coverage factor, and is defined to show that only a fraction of de-
posited molecules participate in wettability alteration. Sasp can be cal-
culated as following:
Sasphalteen = a × Ndeposited asphaltene × Aasphaltene (13)
Where Ndeposited asphaltene is the number of deposited asphaltene molecules
(calculated using Equation (4) in volume and converted to molecule
numbers using asphaltene molar density and Avogadro's number in all
blocks during all times), Aasphaltene is area of an asphaltene molecule (set
as an adjustable parameter) and ‘a’ presents percentage of molecules
which stick to the pore surface horizontally and monolayer (set as an
adjustable parameter).
Spore in Equation (12) is calculated with the assumption that porous
media is a bundle of capillary tubes. The pore's surface is calculated as
M. Ghadimi et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 173 (2019) 630–639

Table 1
Reservoir fluid properties and composition.
Component Mole percent Critical volume [ft3/ lbmol] Molecular weight Critical temperature [R ] Critical pressure [psi] Acentric factor

CO2 1.22 1.5043 44.01 548.46 1071.3 0.225

C1 38.63 1.5683 16.043 343.08 667.8 0.013
C2 + C3 11.74 2.7067 35.769 596.844 670.7 0.12046
C4 5.58 4.1175 58.124 756.54 544.5 0.19635
C5 3.32 4.9539 72.151 837.306 490.1 0.23943
Heavy HC 39.01 14.5982 231.6 1354.284 311.9 0.88453
Asphaltene 0.5 32.0245 500 1744.056 298.6 2.0347

Fig. 2. (a) Matching fluid expansion test results, (b) onset points, bubble points and offset points, (c) asphaltene precipitation curves for different temperatures.

Table 2 rtube = 8k / ∅ (14)

Simulation input data.
Parameter value
Where rtube is tube radius, K is absolute permeability and ∅ is porosity.
The number of tubes in each cylindrical block ‘N’ is calculated as
drainage radius 6560 ft follow:
Height 197 ft
Number of grid blocks 20 × 1 × 1 2
N= (2 × ∅ × r × h)/ rtube (15)
Reservoir temperature 170 F
Initial reservoir pressure 7000 psia
Bottom hole pressure 4000 psia Where r is block radius, h is block height and rtube for each grid block is
Well radius 0.75 ft calculated by Equation (14).
Porosity 0.05 Having number of tubes ‘N′ and their radius ‘rtube ‘, pore surfaces for
Absolute permeability 10 md each block ‘ Spore ’ can be obtained as following:

Spore = N × 2 × π × rtube × (rp − rn ) (16)

summation of area of these same length and same radius tubes. Koze-
ny–Carman have calculated radius of these tubes as follow (by the as- Where rp and rn are respectively right and left boundaries of each blocks
suming tortuosity factor = 1) (Carman, 1937, 1956; Kozeny, 1927): and (rp − rn ) is length of tubes.

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M. Ghadimi et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 173 (2019) 630–639

Fig. 3. 1D reservoir discretization, the blocks boundaries are calculated loga-

rithmically in r2 base (Aziz and Settari, 1979).
Fig. 5. Cumulative oil production vs. time for four simulation cases: without
deposition (—), deposition without wettability alteration ( ), deposition and
Table 3
gradually wettability alteration ( ), deposition and abrupt wettability al-
Formation water properties.
teration ( ).
Parameter Value

Density 62.41 lb/ft3

Compressibility 4 × 10−5 psi−1
Viscosity 0.3 cp
Initial saturation 0.3

Table 4
Surface deposition model parameters.
Parameter value

Surface deposition rate coefficient (α ) 0.00004 s−1

Entrainment coefficient (β ) 0
Pore-throat plugging coefficient 0.0015 1/ft
Critical velocity 0
Snowball-effect deposition constant 150
Permeability-porosity correlation exponent 8

Fig. 6. ‘F’ versus time for blocks 1,2,10 and 20.

2.4. Reservoir simulator

Modeling asphaltene precipitation in a compositional model re-

quires considering pressure, temperature, and composition variations.
The governing equations for a compositional model are:

1) Mass conservation equations for all components in the system. There

Fig. 4. Initial relative permeability curves and shifted relative permeability
curves due to wettability alteration.
are nc +1 equations for hydrocarbon components and water, where
nc is number of hydrocarbon components.
2) Equilibrium constraint which obtained from components fugacity
equality in all exiting phases. It comprises nc equations.
3) Capillary pressure equations (np − 1 equations) which express re-
lation between pressures of two phases, where np is the number of
phases.
4) Summation of phase saturations must equal to unity which is the
saturation constraint.
5) Summation of component mole fractions in each phase which must
be equal to unity. This is mole fraction constraint, and includes
np − 1 equations. It is written only for hydrocarbon phases because

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M. Ghadimi et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 173 (2019) 630–639

volume as a function of pressure and moles of each component. The

differentiation of both sides of equation (17) with respect to time and
using material balance equation, would give rise to pressure equation:

(∅V cb f −
∂Vt
∂P )( )
∂P
∂t
n +1 → n =
− Vb ∑i =c 1 Vti ∇ . ∑ j =p 1 k λj ξ j x ij ∇P
n +1 → n = n +1 → n
= Vb ∑i =c 1 Vti ∇ . ∑ j =p 1 k λj ξ j x ij (∇Pc 2j − γj ∇D) + Vb ∑i =c 1 Vti ∇ . ∑ j =p 1 ∅ξ j
= n +1
Sj Kij∇x ij + ∑i =c 1 Vti qi
(18)

where

cf : Formation compressibility
Vb : Bulk volume
P: Pressure
t: Time
=
k : Permeability tensor
λj : Mobility of fluid phase j
ξ j : Molar density of fluid phase j
Fig. 7. Average reservoir pressure vs. time for four simulation case: without x ij : Mole fraction of component i in fluid phase j
asphaltene deposition (—), asphaltene deposition without wettability alteration Pc 2j : Capillary pressure of fluid phase 2 and fluid phase j
( ), asphaltene deposition and gradually wettability alteration ( ), as-
γj : Specific weight of fluid phase j
phaltene deposition and abrupt wettability alteration ( ).
D : Depth
Sj : Saturation of fluid phase j
water phavse is a pure phase and contains no other components. =
Kij : Dispersion tensor
qi : Molar flow rate of component i
The same number of variables must be selected. Aziz (1999) by
calculation of freedom degree for an isothermal compositional system
Vti and ∂Vt are volume derivatives with respect to total component
concluded it is enough that nc number of equation be solved which ∂P
mole number and pressure. They are the most problematic parameters
named primary equations. In fully implicit method, these equations are
of this equation. Vti dictates how much the total volume of system
simultaneously solved. IMPEC (Implicit Pressure and Explicit Compo-
changes as moles of one special component change. In a single phase
sition) method presented by Chang (1990) has been used here. In this
system Vti is equal to partial molar volume of that specie. When a mole
method, pressure is obtained implicitly, total concentration is calcu-
is added to a multiphase system it causes mass transfer between phases
lated explicitly, and it is a sequential solution scheme. Chang derived an
to reach a new equilibrium state. At this new condition, molar volume
equation from volume balance to obtain pressure which is similar to
and moles of each phase are different from previous state. In a multi-
that one used by Acs et al. (1982).
phase system, Vti is not equal to volume of added or diminished mole-
Reservoir fluids are placed in the pores and filled them totally so:
cules like single phase system but also shifting equilibrium state to a
→ new equilibrium state and changes in phases' molar volumes must be
Vp (P ) = Vt (P , N ) (17) ∂V
considered. ∂Pt is volume response to pressure change and in a single
Where Vp is pore volume as a function of pressure and Vt is total fluid phase system ∂Vt
is just expansion and contraction due to pressure
∂P

Fig. 8. Deposition profile around wellbore for three simula-

tion cases: deposition without wettability alteration ( ),
gradually wettability alteration (–s-), abrupt wettability al-
teration ( ).

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M. Ghadimi et al. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 173 (2019) 630–639

Fig. 9. average reservoir pressure (a), cumula-

tive oil production (b) vs. time for six simulation
cases: no deposition ( ), deposition without
wettability alteration (….), deposition with
wettability alteration (asphaltene dia-
meter = 0.23 nm) ( ), deposition with wett-
ability alteration (asphaltene dia-
meter = 0.45 nm) ( ), deposition with
wettability alteration (asphaltene dia-
meter = 0.76 nm) ( ), deposition with abrupt
wettability alteration. ( ).

Fig. 12. Initial relative permeability curves and shifted relative permeability
curves due to wettability alteration for case 3.
Fig. 10. Initial relative permeability curves and shifted relative permeability
curves due to wettability alteration for case 1.
change. In a multiphase system though, besides the expansion and
contraction, pressure changes collapse the balance and in the new
equilibrium state phases‘ moles and their volumes are different. These
two parameters can be calculated analytically by EoS (Chang, 1990).
Applying the asphaltene deposition into compositional model makes
differences into pressure equation. In addition to pressure decline, now
dV
asphaltene deposition can also reduce pore volume so dep must be
dt
subtracted from left hand side of equation (18) as suggested by Darabi
(2014). Finite difference form of the above equation in the cylindrical
coordinate which is developed by Abdollah Pour (2011) has been used.
If asphaltene precipitates then a new phase appears in the system which
flows individually. Now oil phase relative permeability which is read
from a user defined look-up table is considered as relative permeability
of liquid hydrocarbon phase. It will be distributed between oil and
asphaltene phase in proportion to their saturations as it was done before
for four phases systems (Chang, 1990; Gardner et al., 1981; Nghiem and
Li, 1986).

Soil
kr , oil = kr , hydrocarbon ⎛⎜ ⎞
⎟
⎝ Soil + Sasphaltene ⎠ (19)

Sasphaltene ⎞
Fig. 11. Initial relative permeability curves and shifted relative permeability kr , asphaltene = kr , hydrocarbon ⎛⎜ ⎟
curves due to wettability alteration for case 2. ⎝ oil + Sasphaltene ⎠
S (20)

Where kr , hydrocarbon is relative permeability of liquid hydrocarbon

phase. kr , oil and kr , asphaltene are respectively the oil phase relative

636
M. Ghadimi et al.
permeability and asphaltene phase relative permeability. Sasphaltene and
Soil are asphaltene and oil phase saturations. Similar to oil phase, as-
phaltene phase viscosity is calculated by Lorentz-Bray-Clark method
(Lohrenz et al., 1964).
2.5. Overall computational procedure
1. Solve implicitly pressure equation for pressure at each grid-block.
2. Update grid-block porosity at the new pressure.
3. Solve mass conservation equations explicitly to obtain total moles of
each component.
4 Perform stability analysis and flash calculation
5 Compute the amount of deposition if asphaltene precipitates
6 Update porosity and absolute permeability
7. Calculate the new number of moles (subtract the deposited as-
phaltene moles from total asphaltene moles)
8 Evaluate the phase saturation using the phase mole amount and the
molar density
9 Calculate relative permeability and apply wettability alteration if
asphaltene deposited
10 March to the next time-step
3. Results and discussion
A bottom hole live oil sample from one of Iranian oil field is
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Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 173 (2019) 630–639
Fig. 13. Average reservoir pressure (a) and cu-
mulative oil production (b) vs. time for five si-
mulation cases: no deposition ( ), deposition
without wettability alteration ( ), deposition
with wettability alteration (final state No.1) (
), deposition with wettability alteration (final
state No. 2) ( ), deposition with wettability
alteration (final state No. 3) ( ).
Fig. 14. Average reservoir pressure (a) and cu-
mulative oil production (b) variation by time for
five simulation cases: No deposition ( ), de-
position without wettability alteration (….), de-
position with wettability alteration (a = 0.5) ( ),
deposition with wettability alteration (a = 0.7)
( ), and deposition with wettability alteration
(a = 0.9) ( ).
investigated in this study. Constant composition expansion (CCE) test at
174 °F, asphaltene onset temperature at 40 bar, bubble pressure at
174 °F and SARA analysis were available for this oil sample. According
to the SARA test, weight percentage of asphaltene in the dead oil was
2.8%. Pseudo-component, C6+ is split into two precipitating and not
precipitating fractions. The precipitating fraction is considered to be
asphaltene. Heavy HC in Table 1 is considered as non-precipitating
fraction of C6+. The regression on pseudo component's properties was
performed to reproduce experimental data with least square deviation.
The properties of the matched fluid are shown in Table 1. The predicted
phase behavior diagrams and available experimental data points for
this fluid are shown in Fig. 2.
A one-dimensional radial flow in an under-saturated reservoir is
considered. Table 2 summarizes the reservoir properties and input data
for the simulator. The reservoir is defined as a cylinder with radius of
6560 ft which is divided into 20 variable size grid blocks in the radial
direction (Fig. 3). One production well with radius of 0.75 ft is located
at the center of this cylinder which produces with a constant bottom
hole pressure of 4000 psia. The initial reservoir pressure is 7000 psia.
Reservoir porosity and permeability are 0.05 and 10 md, respectively.
The compressibility of formation is ignored. The reservoir temperature
is 170 °F and predicted onset pressure at this temperature based on
thermodynamic calculations is 9272 psia so initial reservoir pressure is
in the range of asphaltene precipitation (Fig. 2(c)). Water properties are
presented in Table 3. Water at its initial saturation is movable.
M. Ghadimi et al.
Deposition model parameters are also listed in Table 4. Initial relative
permeability curves in addition of shifted curves due to wettability al-
teration are illustrated in Fig. 4.
Fig. 5 shows how asphaltene deposition and wettability alteration
affected cumulative oil production. In this figure, four simulation cases
are compared. As stated before, asphaltene would cause problems due
to two main reasons, namely i) reduction in porosity and permeability,
and ii) wettability alteration. In order to discern the importance of each
of these two mechanisms, one of the simulations has been done under
these conditions that asphaltene deposition only reduces porosity and
absolute permeability and wettability alteration is ignored then another
case for which the wettability alteration is considered. As in the de-
scription of wettability alteration model was stated, with growing de-
position on the pore surface, ‘F′ grows (see Equations (8)–(16)); so
wettability of surface alters gradually. Fig. 6 shows the amount of ‘F”
vs. time for blocks of 1, 2, 10 and 20. The asphaltene diameter is
considered 0.34 nm in this simulation. To show how much wettability
alteration could be severe, a case was simulated which did not use
wettability alteration model presented here but considered relative
permeability curves convert to final curves from the beginning of de-
position. Actually it is an abrupt and intense damage not gradual. The
mentioned wettability alteration model results can approach this severe
mode by changing the adjustable parameters in Equation (13) (larger
size for asphaltene molecules and larger parameter ‘a’). It is observed
asphaltene deposition causes production decline while it just reduces
porosity and permeability and has no impact on wettability. The pro-
duction decline becomes more severe if wettability alteration (with
specified values for model parameters) is considered. The most severe
mode which assumes complete wettability alteration since the first
moment of deposition shows a very sharp decline (Fig. 5).
Given that the initial oil in place is the same in all cases and cu-
mulative oil production is less in case of considering asphaltene de-
position then more oil would be remained in the reservoir.
Furthermore, available pore space for this fluid shrinks due to asphal-
tene deposition, so higher average reservoir pressure is observed in that
case. In the case of considering wettability alteration more reduction in
oil production occurred, then as expected average reservoir pressure
drops less than previous case. It is clear from Figs. 5 and 7, that wett-
ability alteration can even cause a worse damage comparing to porosity
and permeability reduction (Darabi, 2014).
Fig. 8 compares asphaltene deposition profile around the wellbore
for three cases. It is expected that maximum deposition occurs in well
block because of the lowest pressure, however impacts of composition
and pressure must be taken into account simultaneously. Moving to-
ward the well, pressure decreases and it is followed by intensified de-
position. On the other hand, by fluid flowing from far blocks toward
well block, porous media as a filter adsorbs asphaltene from oil. Thus
the percentage asphaltene in the oil near the wellbore is reduced. The
combination of these two factors eventuate the pick of deposition ex-
pand in the reservoir. The pick is located in the well block in early time
in less than 23 days. It reaches second block at around 3000 days (it was
already seen in Fig. 6 that the highest value of parameter ‘F’ occurred in
block 2), and seems its distance from the wellbore growing during time.
As it is obvious from the Fig. 8, wettability alteration lessens amount of
deposition but still cumulative production is in its lowest value (Fig. 5).
This is another evidence showing wettability alteration has a major
effect on the production decline versus plugging pore throats and re-
duction of porosity and absolute permeability (Darabi, 2014).
4. Sensitivity analysis
The wettability alteration model comprises some parameters.
Sensitivity analysis was done to investigate the effect of each parameter
on wettability alteration. These parameters are asphaltene diameter,
covered surface percentage of ‘a’ and final state of relative permeability
curve. Fig. 9 shows the effect of asphaltene diameter on wettability
638
Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 173 (2019) 630–639
alteration. It can be concluded that surface becomes more oil wet as the
value of asphaltene diameter increases. As asphaltene becomes larger
more production reduction and consequent higher reservoir pressure is
expected as a result of more coverage.
In wettability alteration model two wettability modes have been
introduced as initial and final states. Depending on asphaltene struc-
ture, formation minerals and their interactions, the final state (after-
deposition state) varies in a wide range from one oil-formation system
to another one. A sensitivity analysis is done on final state as before is
done by Darabi (2014). Here in Figs. 10–12, three different final state
relative permeability curves are shown where initial states are the
same. To achieve a hypothetical final state curve for oil in addition to
reduction of oil permeability, residual oil saturation is shifted from 0.3
to 0.35, and oil saturation at the end point moves from 0.8 to 0.85. The
final state of water relative permeability curve is obtained by shifting
initial curve toward up and left (residual water saturation is changed
from 0.2 to 0.15). The effects of final state of relative permeability
curve on cumulative oil production is shown in Fig. 13. The results
show that when the final state of relative permeability curve represents
a more oil wet case (case 1), then more reduction in oil production is
anticipated. As stated before, increased average pressure is a result of
reduction in cumulative production (Fig. 13).
Fig. 14 indicates the effect of covered surface percentage, ‘a’, on
cumulative production and reservoir average pressure. A larger ‘a’
parameter means asphaltene molecules stick to surface in such a way
that cover surface more. It can be seen that cumulative production
decreases and reservoir average pressure increases with increasing
covered surface percentage as a result of surface becoming more oil
wet.
5. Conclusion
In this study, asphaltene precipitation and deposition as well as
wettability alteration were implemented into a compositional model to
investigate asphaltene problems during primary production. The pre-
cipitated asphaltene was considered as a pure dense liquid which par-
tially would flow or deposit. The subtracting deposited volume from
initial porosity gave local porosity. New permeability was related to
new porosity via a power correlation. The results showed during pri-
mary production most asphaltene deposition occurs around wellbore.
At early times, the maximum deposition occurs in the well block but
later on, the deposition profile around wellbore showed a maximum
point somewhere farther from well block. The effect of wettability al-
teration was separated from porosity, permeability reduction. It is
concluded that wettability alteration has an irrefutable effect which
could be dominant mechanism in formation damage. The sensitivity
analysis on parameters such as asphaltene particle size and coverage
factor showed by getting larger asphaltene size and considering more
interaction for horizontally oriented asphaltene-mineral, one should
expect more wettability alteration i.e. intensified formation damage.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2018.10.058.
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