Study of the Effect of Steam Injection on Crude Oil Displacement Yield from an Oil Contaminated Soil Bed

Abstract

A substantial oil recovery of different packed soil samples has been obtained by the removal of light and heavy crude oils, with different American Petroleum Institute (API) gravity indexes. Steam and water injection methods are applied to different soil particle size samples (core size) and different types of oil gravity. The amount of oil removed increases with increasing the core size (permeability and porosity). For 0.5 mm core size and light oil (35-API), oil recovery reaches 98 wt% using superheated steam and 96 wt% using saturated steam. For heavy oil (24-API), oil recovery reaches 91 wt% using superheated steam and 90 wt% using saturated steam. For 0.2mm core size and heavy oil (24-API), oil recovery reaches 85% using superheated steam and 74 wt% using saturated steam. These results suggest that oil recovery increases as cell temperature and core size (permeability and porosity) increase, and the addition of surfactants to steam increased oil recovery amounting to around 3 wt%. Water injection resulted in low oil recovery, and the maximum oil recovery is 5 wt%, and 20 wt% using cold and hot water, respectively.