Message from the Director of PERC, Milind D. Deo

Petroleum Research Center (PERC) at the University of Utah was organized for promoting innovative research and graduate training applied to the development of efficient, cost-effective and environmentally benign methods of oil and gas production, transportation and processing. PERC is a University recognized center and operates within the Department of Chemical Engineering. PERC was the State of Utah Center of Excellence from 2000-2005. PERC has one of the most well equipped, state-of-the-art oil properties measurement laboratories. Innovative fluid characterization and data interpretation tools are being developed at PERC through support from the industry, the state of Utah and the federal government. PERC specializes in fracture/fault characterization, representation and simulation. As part of its academic mission, PERC offers a diverse, practical educational experience for select graduate students wishing to train for careers in the petroleum industryand related fields. This website presents a tour of our strengths and capabilities. We invite you to browse through the pages and if possible visitus here in Salt Lake City for a personal tour of our facilities. Please contact us for any information that you may need.

Some of the most recent work of our graduate students and facultyis featured in the following presentations.

Oil characterization, thermodynamics and flow as it applies to FlowAssurance

• How improving oil characterization improves the performance of wax precipitation models
• Wax deposition; experiments and modeling
• Chemometrics
• Asphaltene flocculaton
• Carbon dioxide induced asphalteneprecipitaton

Modeling fractured reservoirs

• The control-volume finite-element simulator
• The mixed control volume simulator
• Modeling complex wells (SPE-IORPoster)
• Naturally fractured reservoir workshop– Houston, Texas, January 2006
• SPE Forum on Naturally Fractured Reservoirs – Denver, June 2006
• Simulations of fractured tight-gas reservoirs

Heavy oil production and processing including oil sands and oilshale

• Reservoir characterization and simulation of PRUfee, Midway Sunset
• SAGD studies of oil sand reservoirs
• Energy balance analysis of surface shale retorting
• Simulations of insitu oil production from oil shale

Carbon dioxide sequestrations

• Carbon dioxide injection in EOR applications and in CO2 sequestration
• Impact of faults on integrity of storage

General Reservoir Simulation and Simulator Development

• Waterflooding in Greenriver Formation
• Optimization in reservoir simulation
• Simulator structure
• Simulator online, visual interface