Dış Kaynaklı Proje Süreçleri Yönetim Sistemi
Akın S. (Yürütücü), Sevindik D., Tokel A.
Please describe the following aspects in separate paragraphs.
i) Scientific/Technological Excellence
ii) Methodology
iii) Project Management
iv) Importance of International Collaboration
v) Impact
Decreasing conventional oil reserves while increasing demands and the reserve consumption, have renewed the interest of producing unconventional hydrocarbon reserves. Significant challenges like high viscosity and density, high asphaltene, sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen and heavy metals content of heavy oil limits its recovery, transport and process with difficulties. The main mechanism in most of heavy oil recovery methods refers to improving the mobility ratio due to decrease in oil viscosity. In most of these methods, once the oil comes to surface the oil rebuilds its viscosity again. So, o in-situ heavy oil upgrading is inevitable to reach a permanent improvement in oil properties and also to enhance oil recovery. From a different perspective, industrial wastes have created major challenges from health and environmental point of view. Previous studies showed that industrial wastes like steel dust may have a catalytic effect on heavy oil upgrading, hence, using such wastes for heavy oil upgrading to improve the oil quality, decrease the oil viscosity and finally to enhance oil recovery are the aims of this research. This eco-friendly method may fall within the oil and gas engineering and also petroleum and natural gas divisions in this call. The main objective of this research is to experimentally investigate the effect of steel waste on permanent improvement of oil properties for in-situ upgrading through removing the heavy component and also sulfur, nitrogen, heavy metals and hence decrease oil viscosity and increase the oil recovery in porous media. As per TRL5, the product of this research will be in laboratory scale, but simulations will be conducted to extend the product by upscaling to pilot and industrial scales. The characterization laboratory tests will be carried out to guarantee alteration of oil structure. Any alteration of heavy components will be analyzed through SARA, CHNS and FTIR tests. Also, oil viscosity will be measured during the upgrading process. To investigate the upgrading process on enhanced oil recovery rates, recovery tests will be performed using scaled experimental setups. Simulation of heavy oil upgrade experiments will be conducted. These simulations will then be extended to field scale to have a better understanding of the simultaneous in-situ upgrading and enhanced oil recovery.