Center for Petroleum & Minerals
Department of Petroleum Engineering
Joint
SEMINAR
Monday
February 25, 2013
2:00 – 3:00 PM
Building 15, 4th Floor (Auditorium)
King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals
Auto Bubble Point Determination
By
Dr. Muhammad Al-Marhoun
Abstract
Pressure Volume Temperature (PVT) relationships are very important in reservoir engineering
computations such as material balance calculations, well test analysis, reserve estimates, and numerical
reservoir simulations. The method to obtain such data is to conduct multi constant composition expansion
experiment on a gas-oil mixture at several temperatures. The analysis of the data obtained will define the
bubble point pressure and volume, the volumetric behavior above and below bubble point pressure
including oil compressibility and thermal expansion properties.
The oil industry current practice in determining bubble point pressure is a trial and error method with the
help of a smoothing function called y-function applied on experimental pressure-volume-temperature
data. This procedure is non repeatable.
A new innovative algorithm will be presented that is based on constant composition expansion test that
eliminates the need for trial and errors solutions and can generate repeatable PVT properties including:
Bubble point pressure, Bubble point volume, Oil thermal expansion above Pb, Isothermal oil
compressibility above Pb, Oil relative volume above Pb, and the Two phase relative volume below Pb.
This new method is presented in a software package which is user friendly and can generate detailed and
comprehensive CCET report.
Short bio
Dr. Al-Marhoun is an adjunct professor and former chairman of the Petroleum Engineering Department
at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. His research interests include
fluid properties and reservoir engineering. He has published more than fifty technical papers. He served
as a Distinguished Lecturer for the 2001-2002 SPE Distinguished Lecturer Program. Dr. Al-Marhoun is
the 2005 recipient of the SPE Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering Faculty.
Dr. Al-Marhoun has developed several PVT correlations and artificial neural network models, which are
becoming more popular in the industry due to their generality and accuracy. He is a member of the
Society of Petroleum Engineers.
ALL ARE WELCOME!