An Exponential Solvent Chamber Geometry for Modeling the VAPEX Process

Abstract

Accurate simulation of the VAPEX process relies heavily on precise modeling of the solvent chamber propagation. In the previously developed models, the solvent chamber possesses either a linear, circular, or parabolic shape. In this study, an exponential solvent chamber model was considered to represent the propagation of the chamber throughout the spreading and falling stages of the VAPEX process. The tuning parameters of the proposed model include the exponential function coefficient and the transition region thickness. These parameters are altered by employing a MATLAB-based Genetic Algorithm (GA) to minimize the error between determined and measured cumulative produced oil in four experimental case studies presented in the literature. According to the outcomes, the proposed method can accurately adjust the cumulative produced oil to the measured values in both spreading and falling stages. Additionally, the thickness of the transition region obtained by this model is in reasonable agreement with the laboratory measurements. Accordingly, the average relative errors of all four cases for cumulative produced oil and transition region thickness are 7.73% and 5.12%, respectively. Consequently, the model estimates the oil production rate with reasonable precision and the predicted solvent chamber shapes are well-aligned with the experimentally observed chambers.

Keywords

• VAPEX process
• solvent chamber propagation
• exponential model
• transition region thickness
• oil production prediction