Measurement of Viscosity of Heavy Oil Mixtures by Capillary Viscometer (CAT#: STEM-PPA-0009-YJL)

Introduction

The tremendous increase of oil demand and the depletion of low-viscosity oils have led to the rapid development of very large world resources of heavy oils. However, production and transport of these heavy oils have been challenging because of their very high viscosities. Many recent studies have concentrated on thermal and solvent methods to reduce the oil viscosity to optimize the production of heavy oils.<br />The estimation of the viscosity of heavy oil mixtures is very important in the petroleum industry to evaluate fluid flow either in the reservoir or for pipeline transportation. Many of the viscosity correlations need recalibration of the parameters to deal with fluids from a specific geographical region. This makes the correlations fluid dependent due to the differences among reservoir fluids such as degree of aromaticity, paraffin content and/or proportions and type of non-hydrocarbon impurities.