An experimental approach for measuring carbon dioxide diffusion coefficient in water and oil under supercritical conditions

Several direct or indirect approaches have been proposed to measure diffusion coefficient of gases into liquids. The main complexity of indirect techniques such as pressure decay method is interpreting early pressure–time data which strongly affected by incubation period effect or convective instability. In the current approach, accurate apparatus and precise experimental setup including a high pressure and temperature PVT cell, a high precision Sanchez pump, heating and recording sub-system are implemented and a novel data analysis procedure is applied to modify pressure decay method. The effect of incubation period is reduced remarkably and diffusion coefficient of carbon dioxide in water in wide range of pressures and temperatures is determined and the effects of temperature, pressure and carbon dioxide phase alteration from gas to supercritical are investigated and the value of uncertainty is estimated. Furthermore, diffusion coefficient of CO₂ and methane in an oil sample from one of the Iranian southwest oil formations is determined precisely using the experimental approach while no incubation period is detected. The results showed that incubation period duration decreases with increasing diffusion coefficient. Additionally, when CO₂ state is gas, rate of increasing diffusion coefficient with pressure is decreased with temperature and when CO₂ state is supercritical, the rate of increasing diffusion coefficient with pressure is decreased significantly.