National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) Techniques &

Fractional distillation column (FDC)

Presented By:
Presented To: Anand Kumar Chaudhary (211324004
Dr. Vedharaj S Piyush Kumar (211324022)
Varun Rawat (111121130)
 Introduction
• Recovery of oil from underground oil well is the key factor in
oil production.
• The average of recovery factor world wide is to be increased to
meet the demand and supply chain. The oil produced from
mature and maturing oil fields were not able to meet the pace of
the demand for oil.
• It was known that world’s average recovery factor is near to
just 30%.
• These limitations lead to the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) to
meet the present energy demands.
• These innovative methods involve injecting
various substances into reservoirs to enhance
the extraction of hydrocarbons.
• EOR methods encompasses the extraction of
remaining oil in the well after primary and
secondary recoveries. This greatly improves
the recovery factor.
• Enhanced Oil Recovery can recover 50% to
80% of a reservoir’s original oil in place,
significantly higher than the <30%
achievable through primary and 30% to 50%
through secondary.
Oil Recovery

Primary Recovery
(Natural Formation Pressure)

Secondary Recovery
(Water and Gas)

Tertiary Recovery (EOR)

(Thermal, Gas, Chemicals)
Primary Recovery

• Primary recovery, the initial phase of oil recovery, primarily

relies on the reservoir's natural pressure and utilizes artificial
equipment installed on oil rigs.
• It is mainly a passive method, with oil flowing to the surface
due to the inherent reservoir pressure. In this phase, no
additional substances or processes are used to enhance
recovery. Primary recovery is typically effective in the early
stages of reservoir development when the natural pressure is
sufficient to force oil to the surface.
Secondary Recovery

• Secondary recovery comes into play when the natural

reservoir pressure decreases.
• This phase aims to restore and maintain reservoir pressure by
injecting fluids such as water and gas into the reservoir.
• These injected fluids occupy the void spaces in the reservoir,
thus increasing pressure and pushing more oil towards the
production wells.
EOR

• It is employed when primary and secondary methods are no

longer sufficient to recover the remaining oil, often due to
low oil mobility or challenging reservoir conditions.
• EOR techniques involve various processes designed to
significantly boost oil production. These methods include
thermal EOR, gas injection and chemical EOR.
• Tertiary recovery techniques help alter the reservoir
properties, reduce oil viscosity, or displace oil from hard-to-
reach areas, resulting in improved oil recovery rates.
Literature Review tells [3]
Major Classifications
Thermal • Steam Flooding
Injection • Fire Flooding

• Polymer Flooding
Chemical Injection • Microbial Injection
• Water Alternating Gas

Gas Injection • CO2

Ratio of different EOR
methods used in projects
around the world

Kokal, S., and Al-Kaabi, A., 2010, “Enhanced Oil Recovery:

Challenges & Opportunities,” World Petroleum Council, EXPEC
Advanced Research Centre, Saudi Aramco, accessed Aug. 24,
2018, https://www.world-petroleum.
org/docs/docs/publications/2010yearbook/P64-69_Kokal-
Al_Kaabi.pdf
 Thermal Injection

Steam Flooding
It involves the high-pressure
injection of steam into the reservoir,
which serves to heat the oil,
reducing its viscosity and driving it
towards production wells. This
method is exceptionally effective in
heavy oil reservoirs where the
viscosity of the oil hinders natural
flow.
Fire Flooding
In this technique air or oxygen is
injected into the reservoir, facilitating
a controlled combustion front. This
process generates heat, which in turn
heats the oil and displaces it towards
production wells. In-situ combustion
is best suited for light and medium
oil reservoirs where natural flow
needs a boost.
Advantages Limitations
• Increased Recovery Rates • High Energy Consumption
• Viscosity Reduction • Environmental Impact
• Improved Sweep Efficiency • Operational Challenges
• Enhanced Oil Properties • Reservoir Suitability
 Chemical Injection
• Injection of various chemicals, like polymer flooding,
surfactant flooding, alkali surfactant polymer flooding.
• This method used to aid mobility and the reduction in surface
tension.
• Dilute solutions of surfactants such as petroleum sulfonates
or biosurfactants such as rhamnolipids may be injected to
lower the interfacial tension or capillary pressure that
impedes oil droplets from moving through a reservoir.
Polymer Flooding
• Uses polymer solutions to increase oil recovery by decreasing
the water/oil mobility ratio hence results in increasing the
viscosity of the displacing water.
• Oil and water are "immiscible" do not mix or blend with each
other. This means that oil and water cannot displace the other
within an oil reservoir. In polymer flooding, a water-soluble
polymer such as Polyacrylamide is added to the water in the
waterflood.
• This increases the viscosity of the water to that of a gel making
the oil and water greatly improving the efficiency of the
waterflood.
• Polymers used are Polyacrylamides and Polysaccharides.
Principle and mechanism of polymer flooding
• Polymer flooding process involves injection of polymer ‘‘slug”
followed by continued long-term water flooding to drive the polymer
slug and the oil bank in front of it toward the production wells.
• Based on the principle of mobility ratio, water-soluble polymer
reduces water mobility by two mechanisms:
✓ increasing the viscosity of the water phase.
✓ reducing the relative permeability of water to the porous rock by
adsorption/retention of the polymer in the rock pore throats.
Advantages of polymer flooding

• Increase in water viscosity.

• Decrease in water mobility.
• Better horizontal and vertical sweep.
• Contact with large reservoir area.
Limitations of polymer flooding
• Lesser injectivity of polymer flood compared to waterflood alone.
• Loss of viscosity of certain polymers due to shear and microbial
degradation.
• Adsorption of polymer by clays in the formation.
• Sensitiveness to reservoir heterogeneities such as fractures and
channels where cross-linked polymers or gel are preferable.
• Requirement of large amounts of polymer to achieve desired results.
• Cost of polymer material.
 Gas Injection
• Technique uses gases such as natural gas, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide (CO2) that
expand in a reservoir to push additional oil to a production wellbore, or other gases
that dissolve in the oil to lower its viscosity and improves its flow rate.
• Gas injection is the oldest injection process for the purpose of maintaining reservoir
pressure and restoring oil well productivity.
• Recent gas injection applications have been intended to increase the ultimate
recovery, considered as EOR applications.
• Because its adverse viscosity ratio (higher mobility ratio) is inferior to water in
recovering oil. Gas may offer economic advantages, however, because of its
availability and relative ease of injection. Thus gas injection is still the preferred
secondary recovery method in certain cases.
• Gas injection may be either a miscible or an immiscible displacement
process. The type of process can be determined by the base of oil & gas,
temp, pressure conditions.
• Gas can be injected into a reservoir to maintain the pressure (dispersed
gas injection) or to attempt to bank and sweep oil to the producing wells
(gas-cap injection).
• Oil recovery could be greatly increased by pressure maintenance,
particularly in the case of oils having a high formation volume factor.
• Elkins and Cooks (1949) noted that the volume of gas injected and the
associated change in oil viscosity and formation volume factor may be
principal factors to determine the oil recovery.
• Promising substitutes in place of Natural gas are the first one is pure Nitrogen
gas and second one is inert gas mixture, i.e., CO2 which is presently emerging
as one of the best EOR methods. Currently, more than 30 oil fields in US are
under nitrogen gas injection. It is less expensive and more easily available.
• The basic principle behind CO2 EOR is the mutual solubility of crude oil and CO2 in
the temperature and pressure conditions of a geologic reservoir.
• By the right conditions, injected CO2 is able to dissolve and displace oil residue that
is trapped in rock pores.
• In a typical CO2 flood operation, a pipeline delivers CO2 to the oilfield, where it is
directed to injection wells. These wells are strategically placed to optimize the areal
sweep of the CO2 through the reservoir.
• As the injected CO2 moves through pore spaces in the rock, it encounters residual
crude oil. The crude oil mixes with the CO2, decreases oil viscosity, pressurizes it, and
mobilizes it, forming a concentrated oil bank that is swept to producing wells. In this
way, oil and gas companies are able to gain access to oil that would otherwise be left
in the ground.
Advantages
• CO2 EOR is a highly effective tool for oil production from mature fields that
might otherwise be abandoned.
• From an environmental standpoint, it represents a practical way to recycle
and utilize CO2 while reducing overall atmospheric CO2 emissions.
Limitations
• Storing of CO2 is challenging.
• Leakage leads to harmful to workers
• Corrosion of equipment
• Affects formation rocks
Fractional Distillation of crude oil
Crude oil is a mixture of hydrocarbons formed from the remains of
simple marine organisms over millions of years.
Fractional distillation separates a mixture into a number of different
parts, called fractions. A fraction of crude oil is a mixture of chemicals
in the crude oil that have similar boiling points.
Formally,
• The process of separating a mixture into a series of fractions of different volatilities by
means of distillation is known as fractional distillation.

• In the process of fractional distillation, a mixture of different liquids is evaporated followed

by condensation. Different liquids are evaporated according to their boiling point and they
are collected in different chambers of distillation tower.

Fractional Distillation of Crude Oil

Generally crude oil contains compounds having boiling points up to 400 °C. In this
process, crude oil is heated to above 400 °C in a pipe. Its vapors are allowed to enter
into a fractionating tower having different compartments to collect different
volatilities. These are now condensed to liquid and are separated.
• Fractional Distillation of Crude Oil is very vital to produce a
wide category of various useful products, ranging from light
gases to heavy oils.
• First, in fractional distillation, crude oil is usually heated to
such a temperature that it will vaporize into gas, whereas the
resultant vapor can then be allowed to enter into the
fractionating column, a tall, vertical column fitted with a
series of trays or distillation plates inside. Inside this column,
the temperature gradually decreases from bottom to top and
hence provides the temperature gradient.
• So, the various hydrocarbons will start to condense at
different heights in the column as they are carried upward in
the vapor. The lighter ones-like methane, butane, gasoline-
have lower boiling points and condense toward the top of the
column, while the heavier products-diesel, lubricating oils,
bitumen-have higher boiling points and condense lower
down. This brings about the separation of crude oil into
different fractions according to the molecular weight and
boiling range of hydrocarbons present.
A typical Fractional Distillation Column as
• Fractional distillation transforms crude oil into helpful and
high-value products. It thereby forms the basis of modern seen in Crude Oil Refineries
petroleum refining processes.
More than 500 different compounds are obtained in the process
of the distillation of petroleum as shown in the table.
Main Individual Fractions from crude oil [4]
Process Flow and Operation
of FDC:
The fractional distillation of crude oil is meticulously designed to
maximize separation efficiency. The process can be broken down
into several systematic steps:

1. Crude Oil Heating

• Purpose: Heating the crude oil to very high temperatures, above

350°C, is one step of fractional distillation.
• Process: Crude oil enters the furnace and is heated to a
temperature where vaporization can occur. This temperature is
important in the process, as it allows the mixture of
hydrocarbons in crude oil to start separating in vapor form.
• Outcome: The heat breaks intermolecular bonds of
hydrocarbons, sending most of the crude oil into vapor, with
possible heavy residue remaining as liquid.

Source: InvexOil Handbook

• 2. Fractionating Column

• Structure: It involves the feeding of vaporized crude oil into the bottom
of a tall, vertical fractionating column, also known as a distillation
tower. Inside this column are trays or packing material that maximize
surface area for vapor-liquid interaction.
• Process: The process involves a temperature gradient from the bottom,
which is the highest, to the top. The heavy vapor molecules begin
condensing on the trays, while the lighter ones continue to rise. The
trays offer a site where condensation and vaporization can occur, hence
increasing the separation of different fractions.
• Importance: The design of this column is done in such a way that, there
is very maximum contact between the rising vapors and descending
liquid to have effective separation of hydrocarbons.

Typical industrial fractionating columns

 Fractional Distillation Columns (FDC)
Structure and Components
• The FDC is a tall, cylindrical tower
(typically 30-60 meters high) containing:
• Multiple horizontal trays/plates (30-50)
arranged at different heights
• Bubble caps or valve trays that facilitate
vapor-liquid contact
• Reflux systems that return some condensed
liquid to improve separation
• Side draw-offs at various heights to collect
different petroleum fractions
• Reboilers at the bottom to provide heat
• Condensers at the top to cool and collect
vapours
Types of Distillation Columns and their Specifications
• 3. Temperature Gradation

• Concept: The Fractionating Column possesses a temperature gradient, further explained as the temperature
being hottest at the bottom while it gets cooler as it goes up.
• Effect: Boiling points of different hydrocarbons vary. As the vapor mixture rises, heavier fractions (higher
boiling points) will start condensing on the bottom trays whereas lighter fractions (lower boiling points) can
climb further up the column before condensation starts.
• Outcome: Such temperature variation will enable the separation of hydrocarbons based on boiling point.
• 4. Vapor-Liquid Equilibrium

• Process: This is done within the column, where an equilibrium balance between vapor rising and liquid
condensing is reached at each tray.
• Interaction: The trays or the packing surfaces allow heavier hydrocarbons in the vapor to condense back
and drain down, while lighter hydrocarbons in the liquid re-vaporize and rise further. Each level of
interaction at the column assures continuous enrichment of the mixture with lighter or heavier fractions
depending upon their position.
• Importance: The fact that at every stage of the column vapor-liquid equilibrium is reached helps the
hydrocarbon separation effectively and distinct fractions may be collected.
• 5. Collection of Fractions

• Separation: The different hydrocarbons condense at different points in the fractionating column, corresponding to the particular fractions boiling points. The
condensed liquids are collected from the various levels of the column, with each level corresponding to a specific fraction of crude oil.
Types of Fractions:

5.1) Bottoms: The heaviest fractions, like asphalt and residual oils, accumulate at the bottom of the column. These are thick and have high boiling points.

5.2) Kerosene: Midway up the column, kerosene, and similar fractions are collected. These are used in products like jet fuel and heating oils.
5.3) Gasoline: Higher up the column, at lower temperature, the gasoline is extracted. Gasoline is a lighter fraction and has a relatively low boiling point.
5.4) Gaseous Hydrocarbons: Light hydrocarbons at the top of the column exist as gases, such as propane and butane, and are drawn off.
• Importance: This systematic collection is carried out so that each fraction may then either be processed further or sold out as a particular petroleum product.

• 6. Cooling & Output

• Final Stage: Once the fractions are separated and collected, they are generally cooled down, in which the vapor gets converted back to its liquid state. This
cooling generally takes place in condensers, which have the potential to reduce the temperature of each fraction after it leaves the column.
• Further Refinement: After cooling, fractions can go through other refinery processes after cooling, such as cracking or reforming, to remove impurities
from the products or enhance the quality of the products. For example, the removal of sulfur may be necessary for ecological reasons.
• Final Products: The fractions, after being refined according to the required industrial or consumer standards, yield saleable products like petrol, diesel,
grease, and gases.
Each step serves to efficiently separate the large variety of hydrocarbons found in crude oil into usable products.
• The diagram summarises the main fractions from crude oil
and their uses, and the trends in properties.
• Note that the gases leave at the top of the column, all other
fractions of crude oil are extracted as liquids.

As you go up the fractionating column, the hydrocarbons have:

•smaller chain lengths

•lower boiling points
•more volatility (easy to evaporate)
•higher flammability (they more easily and burn more cleanly)
•lighter color (the bottom fraction is black, the middle fractions
range from brown to yellow and the fraction at the top is
colorless)

The shorter the chain length of the hydrocarbon

the higher up the fractionating column it will
travel.
Key Factors Affecting Fractional Distillation of
Crude Oil Process
1. Boiling Point Differences: The separation efficacy hinges on the distinct boiling
points of the components within crude oil. Greater differences result in more effective
separation.
2. Column Height & Design: The design and height of the fractionating column affect
the number of theoretical plates, enhancing the interaction between vapors and liquids.
3. Reflux Ratio: This ratio, defined as the amount of condensed vapor returned to the
column versus the amount taken off as a product, is crucial. Higher reflux ratios usually
strengthen purity at the expense of yield.
4. Temperature Control: Precise control over temperature at various column heights is
necessary to optimize the separation of desired fractions.
5. Feed Composition: Variability in crude oil viscosity and density can dramatically
affect the operation of the distillation unit.
 FDC Operational Considerations
Pressure Management
• Most FDCs operate at slightly above atmospheric pressure
• Vacuum distillation columns (secondary FDCs) operate at reduced pressure to separate heavier fractions without thermal
decomposition
Temperature Control
• Precise temperature control is crucial for effective separation
• Temperature gradients are maintained through:
• Feed preheating
• Reboilers at column bottom
• Reflux ratio adjustment
• Cooling water systems
Reflux Systems
• External reflux: Condensate returned from the top condenser
• Internal reflux: Occurs on trays as vapors rise and partially condense
• Reflux ratio control is critical for product purity and energy efficiency
 Challenges of Fractional Distillation
1. High Energy Use: Large amounts of heat are required to separate various fractions, raising
operational costs and environmental concerns due to the reliance on fossil fuels.

2. Pollution: Emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other pollutants can
degrade air quality. Additionally, wastewater and solid wastes must be treated properly to
prevent environmental contamination.

3. Corrosion & Fouling: Harsh operating conditions (high temperatures, corrosive substances)
lead to equipment wear. Deposits (fouling) can reduce efficiency, necessitating regular
maintenance and resulting in downtime.

4. Feedstock Variability: Crude oil composition varies significantly by source, requiring

adjustments in operating conditions and sometimes equipment modifications to maintain
product quality and separation efficiency.
 Fractional Distillation Innovations
1. Advanced Materials: Development of corrosion-resistant alloys and protective
coatings extends equipment lifespan, reduces maintenance frequency, and
minimizes unexpected stoppages, thereby cutting overall maintenance costs.
2. Energy Efficient Technologies: Adoption of heat integration and heat recovery
systems recycles produced heat, significantly lowering energy consumption,
operational expenses, and the carbon footprint of the process.
3. Process Optimization: Utilization of computational modeling and simulation
enables engineers to fine-tune key parameters (temperature, pressure, feed
composition) for optimal operating conditions. This enhances product quality,
throughput, and energy efficiency while reducing the need for costly trial-and-
error experimentation.
4. Automation & Control Systems: Incorporating advanced sensors, real-time
monitoring, and automated control systems minimizes human error and allows
for precise adjustments in process conditions. The integration of AI and
machine learning further enables predictive maintenance and improves overall
operational reliability.
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Thank You