See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/303401454

Introduction to UTCHEM, An In-House Chemcial Simulator

Presentation · February 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.4891.9925

CITATIONS READS

0 6,419

1 author:

Alireza Bigdeli
University of Campinas
21 PUBLICATIONS   18 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Combined LoSal Water and Surfactant Flooding View project

Experimental Study to Design Microemulsions for EOR Process in High Salinity Conditions View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Alireza Bigdeli on 21 May 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 1

Reservoir Simulation course

Feb 2015
Presented by : Alireza Bigdeli
For further information
Supervised by : Dr. Sedaee Sola please Read Appendix 1

Email : Alirezabigdeli@ut.ac.ir
 2

Lecture Contents
• Acknowledgement
01

• General information's
02

• The Creators
03

• UTCHEM Training research

04

05
• Background of UTCHEM

• UTCHEM oil reservoir application

06

• Post Processing Information of UTCHEM

07

• List of input files available for UTCHEM Version 9.82

08

• Case study : Dr.Lashkari’s lacturs

 3

UTCHEM University of Texas chemical simulator

• 3-D,
• multicomponent
• Multiphase
• Variable temperature
• Finite-difference numerical simulator
• Fortran program source code
• compositional model of chemical flooding processes
• complex phase behavior,
• chemical and physical transformations heterogeneous
porous media properties,
• and uses advanced concepts in high-order numerical
accuracy and dispersion control and vector and parallel
processing.

The names that associated with the UTCHEM simulator are :

Pope Delshad and Sepehrnoori
 4

• The basic UTCHEM was developed in the 70s by Gary Pope at shell oil
company

Educational Qualifications:
B.S. Chemical Engineering, Oklahoma State University, 1967
Ph.D. Chemical Engineering, Rice University, 1971

• Educational Qualifications:
• The University of Texas at Austin, Petroleum Engineering, Ph.D.,
1977
• The University of Texas at Austin, Engineering, M.S.E., 1974
• The University of Texas at Austin, Mechanical Engineering, B.S.,
1973

Educational Qualifications:
Sharif University, Tehran, Iran Chemical Engineering B.S. 1978
The University of Texas at Austin Petroleum Engineering M.S. 1981
The University of Texas at Austin Petroleum Engineering Ph.D. 1986
 5

Revised August 17, 2010 Note!!!

6
 7

GPAS
• GPAS is a three-dimensional multicomponent
multiphase fully implicit finite difference and finite
volume compositional simulator with the parallel
processing capability. It includes both a cubic
equation of state model for the hydrocarbon phase
behavior and Hand's rule for the surfactant/oil/brine
phase behavior. The Peng-Robinson EOS is used for
hydrocarbon phase behavior calculations. The aqueous
species in the chemical model include surfactant,
polymer, and salt. The physical property models
include surfactant/oil/brine phase behavior,
interfacial tension, viscosity, adsorption, and relative
permeability as a function of trapping number
 8

UTCHEM

• UTCHEM is a multicomponent, multiphase,

three-dimensional chemical compositional
reservoir simulation model. The flow and
transport equations are as follows:
• A mass conservation equation for each
chemical species
• An overall mass conservation equation that
yields a pressure equation when combined
with a generalized Darcy's law
• An energy conservation equation
 9

UTCOMP
• UTCOMP is an isothermal three-dimensional, EOS
compositional reservoir simulator capable of
modeling up to four-phase flow, namely, an
aqueous phase, an oleic phase, a gaseous phase,
and a second nonaqueous liquid phase. A finite-
difference method that is third-order correct in
space is used to reduce numerical dispersion and
grid orientation effects when solving the
material balance equations. We have dramatically
improved the stability of the third-order method
by adding a flux limiter that makes the scheme
total variation diminish
 10

Background of UTCHEM

• The simulator was originally developed by Pope and Nelson in

1978 to simulate the enhanced recovery of oil using surfactant
and polymer processes.

• Generalizations by Bhuyan et al. in 1990 have extended the

model to include other chemical processes and a variety of
geochemical reactions between the aqueous and solid phases.

• In this simulator, the flow and mass-transport equations are solved

for any number of user-specified chemical components (water,
organic contaminants, surfactant, alcohols, polymer, chloride,
calcium, other electrolytes, microbiological species, electron
acceptors, etc.).
 11

• There are also several version versions of utchem.

• The latest development is UTCHEMP that is a code that is designed
for large scale reservoir simulation on parallel computer
UTCHEM oil reservoir applications :

1. Waterflooding
2. Single well, partitioning interwell, and single well wettability tracer tests
3. Polymer flooding
4. Profile control using gel
5. Surfactant flooding
6. High pH alkaline flooding
7. Microbial EOR
8. Surfactant/foam and ASP/foam EOR
9. Tracer tests to characterize both single and dual porosity oil reservoirs
10. High pH chemical flooding for EOR
11. Profile control of oil wells with polymer gels
12. Modeling formation damage of oil wells
 12

From Dr.lashkari’s lacturs

Chemical Gas/CO2 Thermal Total 1,200,000
USA
800,000
1,000,000
Oil Production, BBL/Day

Oil Production, BBL/Day

700,000 Worldwide
600,000 800,000
500,000
600,000
400,000
300,000 400,000
200,000
200,000
100,000
0 0
1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 2014 Thermal Gas/CO2 Chemical
US EOR production US and Worldwide
OIL&GAS JOURNAL(2012) EOR production in 2012
(OIL&GAS JOURNAL (2012)

Challenges in chemical EOR Modeling

o Promising in recovery (Experiment)  Optimization
o Contribution  Characterization
o Costly operation  Hybrid methods
o Complex displacement and mechanisms  Accurate simulator
 13

From Dr.lashkari’s lacturs

The UTCHEM simulator

1. Comprehensive chemical flooding reservoir simulator

2. An IMPEC reservoir simulator

3. Four-phase capabilities (Air/water/oil/ME)

4. Three-phase equilibrium (Water/oil/ME)

5. Includes important physics relevant to chemical flooding

6. Simulates primary production to complex EOR

7. Slightly compressible

8. Ideal mixture

9. No solution effect and mass transfer between oil and gas

10. Three-phase equilibrium (water/oil/microemulsion)

11. No comprehensive thermal model

 14

From
Dr.lashkari’s
lacturs
CMG-STARS
Comparison of water
saturation (left) and pressure
(right) distribution results
after 800 days between
CMG-STARS (top) and
UTCHEM UTCHEM (bottom).

Pre- Post-
Processor Processor

1 2 3

Processor
 15

Post Processing Information

We use several applications for post-processing UTCHEM output data.
Among them:
Excel to process 2D output files

Surfer and Tecplot to process 3D output files directly from the UTCHEM
program.

Kraken
1. visualize and post-process UTCHEM simulation data;
2. compare UTCHEM results with other simulators (ECLIPSE, Stars, and IMEX);
3. convert an ECLIPSE simulation data set for use with UTCHEM.

S3GRAF

1. provides data visualization and graphing workflows for reservoir simulation and
production data.
2. S3GRAF supports UTCHEM simulation data in addition to other simulators such
as Eclipse, VIP, CMG (IMEX, GEM and STARS), 3DSL, Tempest-MORE, and
others

GMS (Groundwater Modeling) System can be used as a pre- and post-processing

system for a sub-set of UTCHEM applications
 16

Note!!!

List of input
files available
for UTCHEM
Version 9.82

Oil Reservoir Applications

1: Dec Alpha (DEC/Compaq

XP1000)
2: Dell GX1p, 450 mHz,
256MB RAM
 17

List of input
files available
for UTCHEM
Version 9.82

Groundwater Applications

1: Dec Alpha
(DEC/Compaq XP1000)
2: Dell GX1p, 450 mHz,
256MB RAM
 18

UTCHEM-GUI 9.82 is currently available for download free of charge.

This version of the program has been run extensively on computers
running the Windows NT, 2000, and XP operating systems.
19
20
21
22
 23

As we mentioned earlier one of the weakness of utchem software is it

hasn’t comprehensive thermal model
Development of a Four-Phase Thermal-Chemical Reservoir Simulator for
Heavy Oil
Water

A case From
study of Steam Dr.lashkari’s
UTCHEM PhD Thesis
Oil ME
Hand’s rule
In this dissertation, a mathematical formulation of multi (pseudo)
component, four-phase fluid flow in porous media is developed for mass
conservation equation.

In this research, the conservation of energy equation is derived from the

first law of thermodynamics based on a few assumptions and simplifications
for a four-phase fluid flow model.

The conservation of electrical current and the Ohm's law are implemented
using a finite difference method in a four-phase chemical flooding reservoir
simulator (UTCHEM)
 24

Volume Balance Equation

 1  82   
 
np

     22 c2 l K r 2 ( p1  pc 2   2 h ) 
  22  22  8   l 1 
1  
 
nc np

 
h  1 ,h  2 ,8

 h  l 1
 hchl K rl ( p1  pcl   l h ) 

1  
np

 
 8 

l 1
(  8 c8 l   82 c2 l )K rl ( p1  pcl   l h )

nc

q h
p
 h 1
  tot
Vb t
 25

Mass Balance Equation

  nc

  h ( 1   ch )ch   hch  
ˆ ˆ h  1, ..nc ,h  8
t  h 1 
np
 np   h qh
    hchl ul       h Sl D hl chl  
l 1  l 1  Vb

Conservation of Energy Equation

Parameter Values in UTCHEM
 np
T
  1     r  pr     S  p   Number of gridblocks 77x1x73

 1   t Gridblock size 0.5x10x0.5 ft3

Initial temperature
 np  80 oF


   u  p T   . eff T    Number of wells 3 Horizontal

 1  Conductivity model UTCHEM model

  (  s Ss ) 
( H s  H w )   .(  s us )   Initial viscosity of oil 4700 cp (80 oF)

 t  Voltage 220 (0,120, 240 Degree)

qH  qL  qele qinstu Electrical phase 3 phase
2D Model –Three Phase AC
2 4
j (t  ) j (t  )
3 Closed Boundary
Vo e Vo e 3
Rx1,1 RxNx,1

Ry2,1

RyNx-1,1
Ry1,1

RyNx,1
Rx1,2 RxNx,2
Ry2,2

RyNx-1,2
Ry1,2

RyNx,2

Closed Boundary
Rx1,3 RxNx,3
Closed Boundary

Rx1,Ny-2 RxNx,Ny-2

Rx1,Ny-1 RxNx,Ny-1

j (t )
Rx1,Ny RxNx,Ny
Vo e
Closed Boundary
 27

Solution-
procedure
flow chart
for thermal
model
in the
UTCHEM
simulator
 28

Solution-
procedure
flow chart
for electrical
Joule
heating
in the
UTCHEM
simulator
 29

UTCHEM requires two input files (HEAD and INPUT) for non-restart
runs. For restart runs, a binary restart file (INPUT2) is required in addition to
the original input data files used for the previous run. The HEAD input file
gives UTCHEM information regarding the name and size of the problem to be
run
30
 31

Choose a job you love, and you will never

have to work a day in your life.
""Confucius""

View publication stats