In this presentation we will discuss applications of Near-IR spectroscopy and PLS analysis for monitoring production and transportation of heavy crude oil or bitumen. Heavy crude oil and bitumen resources are more than double the conventional light oil reserves worldwide. However, heavy crude oil exploitation is faced with technical challenges at all stages, from recovery/production to transportation and refining due to high viscosity at reservoir conditions alongside the presence of undesirable components such as asphaltenes, heavy metals and sulfur. Blending or dilution of the heavy crude oil or bitumen is the most commonly used technique in the petroleum industry since 1930s. Widely used diluents include condensates from the natural gas production, naphtha, kerosene, light crude oil, etc.<br/><br/>Current methods for measuring the amount of diluent in produced fluids are slow and often inaccurate. Near-IR is sensitive to intermolecular forces and more powerful for molecular identification when compared many spectroscopic techniques including mid-Infrared (MIR) spectroscopy. This talk will focus on Near-IR and Partial Least Squares (PLS) regression of the spectra to determine the composition of mixtures of up to three crude oils and diluents. The data will show that the PLS regression model performs well for the prediction of composition of crude oils and diluent mixtures.

Monitoring production and transportation of heavy crude oil using near infrared spectroscopy

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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