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Written by perc
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Wednesday, 14 January 2009 14:30 |
Petroleum Research Center, University of Utah Milind D. Deo, Director Petroleum Research Center (PERC) at the University of Utah conducts innovative research and graduate training applied to the development of efficient methods of oil and gas production, transportation and processing. PERC, which was the State Center of Excellence from 2000-2005, is a University recognized Center and operates within the Department of Chemical Engineering. PERC has well equipped state-of-the-art oil properties measurement laboratories. PERC has its roots in the extensive oil sands research performed at the University of Utah. Some of the most significant capabilities of PERC are summarized below.
Oil and Gas Characterization and Thermodynamics | Special Bench-scale Studies | Reservoir Simulation and Management | Gas chromatography, gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, including HT-GC | High-pressure core floods, EOR measurements | Discrete-fracture reservoir simulators – developed at PERC ; Control-volume based finite-element simulators | High pressure liquid chromatography, gel permeation chromatography | Supercritical extraction | Black-oil, thermal and compositional simulations of systems of complex geometry | Spectroscopy (UV-VIS, NIR and FTIR) | Flow loops, flow visualization | A 20-processor LINUX cluster for parallel code development | Density, molecular weight and other bulk properties | Reactive transport | Heavy oil recovery modeling – SAGD, in-situ combustion, pyrolysis | Rheology including constant stress rheological measurements | Asphaltene, wax measurements | Integrity of carbon dioxide storage in fractured, faulted systems |
Some of the major recent accomplishments of our students, faculty and staff are listed here.
Technical and Research Accomplishments | Major Impacts of Research (not directly linked to the accomplishments in the left column) | Development of modular, parallel, control-volume based finite element simulators for modeling complex fractured, faulted reservoirs (black oil, thermal and compositional) | We partnered with Lomax Exploration on a US DOE Class I project to institute a waterflood in the Greenriver Formation of the Greater Monument Butte Field. This project revitalized the waterflood activity in the region. Several thousand wells were drilled in the Field due to the success of this project. | Integration of geology, reservoir characterization and simulation in providing practical solutions | Establishing the effect of multiple contact miscibility in carbon dioxide induced asphaltene precipitation | Development of a protocol that showed the level of characterization necessary for being able to predict wax precipitation temperatures | Our project in partnership with ARCO resulted in reactivation of an idle lease in the Midway Sunset Field (the property now belongs to AERA) with over 2 million barrels of incremental recovery. | Chemometrics of crude oil resides with single near IR spectrum |
Four main themes have emerged from the research at PERC. - Flow Assurance
- Fractured Reservoir Modeling
- Unconventional Fuels Research – Heavy Oils, Oil Sands, Oil Shale; Tight Gas, Shale Gas
- Carbon Dioxide Sequestration
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Last Updated on Monday, 02 March 2009 13:37 |