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LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS TO STUDY RHEOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF HIGH VISCOUS OILS

I.A. Guskova

Abstract

The amount of oil reserves considered difficult to recover is constantly increasing and this has become a major current feature of oil production associated with the development of heavy and high-viscous oil fields. The efficiency of their development requires considering the thermodynamic and rheological characteristics of the crude oil to be extracted. The knowledge of rheological parameters, such as viscosity, shear rate and shear stress of crude oil is vital to most areas of the petroleum industry and is especially important in the production of high viscous oil and bitumen. The paper presents the results of laboratory experiments carried out to determine the rheological characteristics of high-viscous oil samples from the Vishnevo-Polyanskoe oil field. Experiments were carried out using the rotary viscometer Rheotest RN4.1. The method involved the study of the crude oil viscosity over a wide range of temperature and velocity gradients. The experimental results revealed that high-viscous oil samples from the Vishnevo-Polyanskoe oil field are characterized by sophisticated rheological behavior, the oils possess thixotropic properties and their intensity, magnitude, is dependent on the temperature. The intervals have been found where the temperature effect on the dynamic viscosity of high-viscous oil showed the best results.

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