Journal of Petroleum & Environmental Biotechnology

Abstract

Equation of State of Crude Oil Samples

Abraham K. George, Ram N Singh and Sayyadul Arafin

Technological advancement in exploration, refinement and enhanced recovery of hydrocarbon fluids heavily depend upon the thermo-physical properties of these fluids under different temperature and pressure conditions. A direct measurement at in-situ conditions is quite difficult; therefore we have utilized thermodynamic equations to extrapolate these thermo-physical properties at ambient conditions. The basic ingredients are density and ultrasound velocity which we have measured in the laboratory as a function of temperature for light and heavy crude oils procured from different wells of Oman. The densities of the samples were measured as a function of temperature using a precision density meter and the sound velocity using an ultrasound interferometer. To understand the variation of physical properties on mixing we have studied a 50:50 mixture of light and heavy oils. These data, in turn, were used to develop the equation of state. Our computed equation of state conforms reasonably well to the in-situ reservoir conditions.