Propane–Bitumen Interactions during Cyclic Solvent Injection─A Cold Lake Case Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Common bitumen recovery processes, such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) and vapor extraction (VAPEX), are not suitable for thin reservoirs due to the heavy consumption of water and heat and the lack of a gravity drainage mechanism. As an alternative, cyclic solvent injection (CSI) at low temperatures has been developed as a more sustainable and energy-efficient technique for bitumen recovery from oil-sand reservoirs. This study aims to conduct specific CSI experiments to address the following questions: (1) How does the propane phase affect bitumen recovery? (2) What mechanisms control bitumen recovery at different propane phases? We synthesized core plugs from in situ oil-sand and bitumen samples of the Clearwater Formation at Cold Lake. Three CSI experiments were conducted by liquid propane (C 3,L ), two-phase propane (C 3,V–L ), and vapor propane (C 3,V ) in a state-of-the-art visualization cell equipped with a camera and a digital pressure transducer. We calculated the bitumen recovery factor (RF b ) by the weight-balance method and analyzed the pressure profiles and images from the core face during the three experiments. The results show that RF b by C 3,V is higher than that by C 3,L . In addition, we observed that when CSI is conducted by C 3,L, the core face is plugged by asphaltene deposition. Furthermore, in CSI by C 3,L, limited bitumen recovery occurs when pressure is dropped below the saturation pressure of propane during depletion. The results also suggest that the combination of asphaltene deposition, solution gas drive, oil extraction, and production under wormhole support are the mechanisms controlling bitumen recovery from oil-sand cores.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".