Reactive Transport and Its Implications on Heavy Oil HTGC Analysis. A Coupled Thermo-Hydro-Chemical (THC) Multiphysics Modelling Approach

Abstract

This chapter provides an insight into the reactive transport in a capillary column which heavy-oil hydrocarbons undergo when analysed by high temperature gas chromatography (HTGC), and their implications on characterisation outcomes, namely thermal cracking of the injected sample; and incomplete or non-elution of heavy components from the column, by using a coupled Thermo-Hydro-Chemical (THC) multiphysics modelling approach. For this purpose, a computational coupled THC, multicomponent, multi-physics model is developed, accounting for: multiphase equilibrium using an in-house, extended thermodynamics distribution factors dataset, up to nC98H198; transport and fluid flow in COMSOL and MATLAB; and chemical reactions using kinetics and mechanisms of the thermal cracking, in CHEMKIN. The determination of the former extended dataset is presented using two complementary HTGC modes: i) High-Efficiency mode, with a long column operated at low flow rate; and ii) true SimDist mode, with a short column operated at high flow rate and elution up to nC100H202.