Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 192 (2020) 107213 Available online 1 April 2020 0920-4105/© 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Integrated reservoir/wellbore production model for oil feld asphaltene deposition management Mohammad Ghasemi a , Eissa Al-Safran b, * a i-Petroleum Engineering Solution Hub, Norway b Petroleum Engineering Department, Kuwait University, Kuwait A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Integrated modeling Asphaltene precipitation and deposition Micellization model Equation-of-state Transport mechanism ABSTRACT Asphaltene deposition prevention, mitigation, and management remains a major challenge to the oil industry due to its complexity, poor understanding, and inadequate predictive tools. A literature review study on asphaltene deposition revealed a lack of integrative models that link reservoir, wellbore, and surface facility to predict asphaltene deposition taking into account the effect of their interaction on asphaltene deposition. In addition, most of the existing studies are focused on either modeling the thermodynamics aspects of asphaltene precipi- tation, or single-phase asphaltene deposition. Therefore, it is critical to model asphaltene deposition under multiphase fow conditions to, accurately, develop prevention, mitigation, and management strategies, which depends on not only asphaltene thermodynamics, but also multiphase fow hydrodynamics and behavior. The objective of this study is to develop a robust systematic approach for predicting asphaltene deposition in pro- duction system through coupling reservoir and wellbore production models, which provides a cost-effective optimal mitigation and management strategies. The proposed work in this study integrates fve models, namely reservoir asphaltene deposition model, equation-of-state (EOS) model, asphaltene thermodynamics precipitation model, mechanistic multiphase fow model, and asphaltene deposition transport model. The above- mentioned models are integrated using developed workfow platform, which enables compositional tracking throughout the entire production system. Furthermore, experimental fuid characterization data was used to tune the EOS model to ensure accurate phase behavior and volumetric calculations, and to tune the thermodynamic asphaltene precipitation model. A feld case input data is used to evaluate the proposed integrated model, which indicates severe asphaltene depositions in production tubing. The proposed model predicted the location and growth of asphaltene deposition thickness with time and space in the inner production-tubing wall. The model results also show that local asphaltene deposition reduced tubing cross-sectional area, increasing in-situ super- fcial oil and gas velocities, thus increasing pressure drop and decreasing fowrate. Sensitivity analyses to investigate several parameters such as depletion drive mechanism, asphaltene particle size, and injection of CO 2 rich gas on asphaltene deposition show excellent results that are aligned with the physical and theoretical un- derstanding of asphaltene deposition. These results are critical in selecting, optimizing, and implementing asphaltene deposition mitigation and management strategies, which affects project economics and safety. 1. Introduction and literature review Asphaltene precipitation and deposition is a major fow assurance challenge, which manifests itself in reservoir, production tubing, fow- line, and process facilities, resulting in poor reservoir management and production operations. In addition, it poses several operational, safety, and economic challenges for oil and gas feld project. Although asphaltene precipitation and deposition depend mainly on fuid composition and pressure, recent studies show that it also depends in a lesser amount on temperature and water cut (Kar et al., 2020). In the following literature review, several asphaltene deposition feld cases are presented frst. Second, a brief description of the existing asphaltene precipitation models is presented. Asphaltene deposition models, and integrated models are discussed in the last section of this literature review. Signifcant asphaltene deposition challenges in Hessi Messaoud feld in Algeria resulted in frequent tubing blockage and cleanout using asphaltene inhibitors (Haskett et al., 1965). Lichaa (1977) reported that * Corresponding author. E-mail address: e.alsafran@ku.edu.kw (E. Al-Safran). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/petrol https://doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2020.107213 Received 16 January 2020; Received in revised form 16 March 2020; Accepted 18 March 2020