Describes the recovery of heavy oils and bitumen by in situ thermal methods and discusses the technical factors and problems involved. The book summarizes, in a quantitative manner, techniques used in current petroleum industry practice.

This exceptional book reveals the results of twelve years of extensive thermoanalytical investigations into petroleum and its products with the aid of 236 tables, 284 diagrams and 159 references. Firstly, the methods employed in obtaining thermoanalytic data, in particular thermogravimetry, differential thermal analysis and differential scanning calorimetry, are presented, and the underpinning theory described. Next, the data obtained from model substances, i.e. pure hydrocarbons, is displayed; it is then explained how multicomponent hydrocarbon systems may be characterized by comparison of their data with this. Research into petroleum and its products using these methods is outlined. The reactions central to various refinery processes, tertiary oil recovery, lubricant stability testing and oil shale retorting, to name but a few examples, are investigated as are relevant pyrolysis and oxidation reactions. Finally, readers are brought up-to-date with recent developments in instrumentation, are recommended hardware and software and are provided with a list of suppliers. Scientists, engineers and technicians working on research, product characterization, process development or quality control in the oil recovery, oil refining, petrochemical, lubricant and asphalt industries will find the advice and information in this book to be of great value.

This book aims at presenting, describing, and summarizing the latest advances in polymer flooding regarding the chemical synthesis of the EOR agents and the numerical simulation of compositional models in porous media, including a description of the possible applications of nanotechnology acting as a booster of traditional chemical EOR processes. A large part of the world economy depends nowadays on non-renewable energy sources, most of them of fossil origin. Though the search for and the development of newer, greener, and more sustainable sources have been going on for the last decades, humanity is still fossil-fuel dependent. Primary and secondary oil recovery techniques merely produce up to a half of the Original Oil In Place. Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) processes are aimed at further increasing this value. Among these, chemical EOR techniques (including polymer flooding) present a great potential in low- and medium-viscosity oilfields. • Describes recent advances in chemical enhanced oil recovery. • Contains detailed description of polymer flooding and nanotechnology as promising boosting tools for EOR. • Includes both experimental and theoretical studies. About the Authors Patrizio Raffa is Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. He focuses on design and synthesis of new polymeric materials optimized for industrial applications such as EOR, coatings and smart materials. He (co)authored about 40 articles in peer reviewed journals. Pablo Druetta works as lecturer at the University of Groningen (RUG) and as engineering consultant. He received his Ph.D. from RUG in 2018 and has been teaching at a graduate level for 15 years. His research focus lies on computational fluid dynamics (CFD).