Programme

P.5 -- Poster, VCTP-44

Date: Tuesday, 30 July 2019

Time: 08:30 - 10:00

Fractionation of Noble Gases in Normal Alkanes at Equilibrium: Monte-Carlo molecular simulation

Han Tuong Luc (1),Hai Hoang (2), Magali Pujol (3), Guillaume Galliero (4)

(1) Ho Chi Minh University of science, 227 Nguyen Van Cu, District 5, Ho Chi Minh City 7000, Vietnam; (2) Institute of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, Duy Tan University, 10C Tran Nhat Duat Street, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Viet Nam; (3) TOTAL S.A., CSTJF, Avenue Larribau, Pau, 64018, France; (4) Laboratoire des Fluides Complexes et leurs Réservoirs (UMR-5150 with CNRS, and TOTAL), Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, BP 1155, F-64013 Pau Cedex, France

Noble gases are natural tracers allowing characterizing the origin, migration, trapping of hydrocarbon reserves. This is because that they are chemically inert under geological conditions and are so fractionated only by physical processes. Accurate estimate in the fractionation of noble gases enable to better describe complex natural processes involved for identifying and extracting oil and gas discoveries. Partition equilibrium between the gas and oil is an important physical process which leads to a fractionation of noble gases. Such fractionation is usually quantified by Henry’s coefficient. Thus, this work is devoted to investigate Henry’s coefficients of noble gases in n-alkanes and their mixtures, i.e. simple gases and oils. To do so, we have performed extensive Monte-Carlo molecular simulations using Trappe-ua force field to model the n-alkanes. Simulation results have shown that the mean field theory is able to well describe the equilibrium fractionation of noble gases in the n-alkanes. Hence, we have employed this theory combined with the simulation results to develop an accurate correlation which yields Henry’s coefficients of noble gases in pure n-alkanes. In addition, a simple extension of this correlation to mixtures of n-alkanes has been also proposed.

Presenter: Luc Han Tuong