Engineering Commons^™

Revisiting The Butler-Mokrys Model For The Vapor-Extraction Process, Vijitha Mohan, Partho Neogi, Baojun Bai

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The dynamics of a process in which a solvent in the form of a vapor or gas is introduced in a heavy-oil reservoir is considered. The process is called the solvent vapor-extraction process (VAPEX). When the vapor dissolves in the oil, it reduces its viscosity, allowing oil to flow under gravity and be collected at the bottom producer well. The conservation-of-species equation is analyzed to obtain a more-appropriate equation that differentiates between the velocity within the oil and the velocity at the interface, which can be solved to obtain a concentration profile of the solvent in oil. We diverge from …