Modeling Asphaltene Precipitation in Reservoir Simulation

Asphaltene precipitation is a serious problem during oil recovery processes. Many models have been developed to predict the precipitation. This paper summarizes these precipitation models and implements the model of Nghiem et al. in The University of Texas Compositional simulator to predict the effects of asphaltene precipitation on fluid flow through porous media. An algorithm is proposed to efficiently couple the precipitation calculation with the fluid-flow computation. A rock-fabric model is introduced to relate the asphaltene precipitation to the changes of permeability and relative permeability. Reservoir simulation results show that consideration of the asphaltene precipitation leads to a different prediction of oil recovery.