Modeling of Pressure Dependence of Interfacial Tension Behaviors of a Complex Supercritical CO2 + Live Crude Oil System Using a Basic Parachor Expression

Abstract

Parachor based basic expressions are often used to model the experimentally observed pressure dependence of interfacial tension (IFT) behaviors of complex supercritical CO2 + crude oil (dead or live) mixtures at elevated temperatures. However, such modeling requires compositions and densities of the equilibrium liquid and vapor phases and molecular weights of various components present in the system. In the absence of measured data, often phase behavior packages are used for obtaining these input data for performing calculations. Very few researchers have used experimentally measured input data for performing parachor based modeling of the experimental IFT behaviors of complex supercritical CO2 + live crude oil systems. This study presents the results of a basic parachor model based modeling of pressure dependence of IFT behaviors of a complex supercritical CO2 + live crude oil system for which experimentally measured input data is available in public domain. Though the calculated IFT behaviors showed significant deviation from the experimentally measured behaviors at a given pressure, calculated IFT versus pressure trends appeared to follow the experimental observed trends closely. Also, despite a large variation in the compositions of feed supercritical CO2 + live crude oil mixtures, both trends (calculated and experimental) converged rapidly to attain a near zero IFT condition at more or less same pressure.