Reservoir Oil Viscosity Determination Using A Rigorous Approach PDF

Reservoir oil viscosity determination using a rigorous approach
Abdolhossein Hemmati-Sarapardeh
a
, Amin Shokrollahi
a
, Afshin Tatar
b
, Farhad Gharagheizi
c,d
,
Amir H. Mohammadi
c,e,
, Ali Naseri
f
a
Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
b
Department of Chemical Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran
c
Thermodynamics Research Unit, School of Chemical Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College Campus, King George V Avenue, Durban 4041, South Africa
d
Department of Chemical Engineering, Buinzahra Branch, Islamic Azad University, Buinzahra, Iran
e
Institut de Recherche en Gnie Chimique et Ptrolier (IRGCP), Paris Cedex, France
f
EOR Department, Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI), Tehran, Iran
h i g h l i g h t s
Reliable viscosity models for oil systems have been developed.
A large database consisting of over 1000 data have been used to develop them.
Their reliability is successfully examined against independent data.
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 26 November 2012
Received in revised form 14 April 2013
Accepted 18 July 2013
Available online 2 August 2013
Keywords:
Crude oil viscosity
Model
Reservoir uid
PVT
Support vector machine
a b s t r a c t
Viscosity of crude oil is a fundamental factor in simulating reservoirs, forecasting production as well as
planning thermal enhanced oil recovery methods which make its accurate determination necessary.
Experimental determination of reservoir oil viscosity is costly and time consuming. Hence, searching
for quick and accurate determination of reservoir oil viscosity is inevitable. The objective of this study
is to present a reliable, and predictive model namely, Least-Squares Support Vector Machine (LSSVM)
to predict reservoir oil viscosity. To this end, three LSSVM models have been developed for prediction
of reservoir oil viscosity in the three regions including, under-saturated, saturated and dead oil. These
models have been developed and tested using more than 1000 series of experimental PVT data of Iranian
oil reservoirs. These data include oil API gravity, reservoir temperature, solution gas oil ratio, and satura-
tion pressure. The ranges of data used to develop these new models cover almost all Iranian oil reservoirs
PVT data and consequently the developed models could be reliable for prediction of other Iranian oil res-
ervoirs viscosities. In-depth comparative studies have been carried out between these new models and
the most frequently used oil viscosity correlations for prediction of reservoir oil viscosity. The results
show that the developed LSSVM models signicantly outperform the existing correlations and provide
predictions in acceptable agreement with experimental data. Furthermore, it is shown that the proposed
models are capable of simulating the actual physical trend of the oil viscosity with variation of oil API
gravity, temperature, and pressure.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Viscosity of crude oil is an important parameter for evaluating
performance of the reservoir, reservoir simulation, designing pro-
duction facilities and utilizing the best scenario for production
[15]. Hence, accurate determination of this parameter is crucial
for the petroleum industry. The common approach to determine
the viscosity is laboratory analysis on the bottomhole samples or
recombined liquids and gases collected from the separators at
the surface. When PVT data are not available, in order to save time
and cost, uid properties are determined by empirical correlations
and equations of state (EOS).
Depending on the input variables, it is possible to divide corre-
lations used for determining oil viscosity in two classes [4]: The
rst class uses common oil eld data such as reservoir tempera-
ture, saturation pressure, oil API gravity, and solution gas oil ratio.
The second one is empirical or semi-empirical models that use
some characteristics not used in the rst approach such as reser-
voir uid composition, critical temperature, acentric factor, pour
point temperature, molar mass, and normal boiling point [68].
0016-2361/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2013.07.072
Corresponding author at: Institut de Recherche en Gnie Chimique et Ptrolier

(IRGCP), Paris Cedex, France.
E-mail address: a.h.m@irgcp.fr (A.H. Mohammadi).
Fuel 116 (2014) 3948
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Fuel
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ f uel
In the past decades, several correlations have been developed to
predict viscosity of crude oils. Some correlations are specic to cer-
tain regions and fail to correctly predict the viscosity for other re-
gions due to differences in crude oil nature and compositions.
These correlations are developed for three different conditions
namely, under-saturated, saturated and the dead oil. A typical vis-
cosity curve at reservoir temperature as a function of pressure is
illustrated in Fig. 1. Therefore, crude oil viscosity correlations can
also be categorized in three types: The rst ones estimate dead
oil viscosity at ambient pressure and various temperatures. The
second ones are used to predict saturated oil viscosity. The third
ones are under-saturated oil viscosity correlations which are em-
ployed to determine the viscosity at pressures above the bubble
point pressure.
Dead oil viscosity is one of the most difcult properties to be
correlated with empirical correlations, because the oil type
(depending on parafn, aromatic, naphthene and asphaltene
content) has a great effect on the viscosity. In this study, many
well-known dead oil viscosity correlations are collected to compre-
hensively investigate performance of existing empirical correla-
tions on Iranian crude oil reservoirs data. The most well-known
correlations for dead oil viscosity were developed by: Beal [9],
Beggs and Robinson [10], Glaso [11], Kaye [12], Al-Khafaji et al.
[13], Petrosky [14], Egbogah and Ng [15], Labedi [16], Kar-
toatmodjo and Schmidt [17], Bennison [18], Elsharkawy and Alik-
han [5], Hossain et al. [19], Naseri et al. [4] and Alomair et al.
[20]. Table 1 gives the summary of the ranges and origin of the data
used in aforementioned correlations.
All the latter correlations correlate the dead oil viscosity with
temperature and API oil gravity while some others have correlated
this property to normally unavailable properties in most common
PVT reports such as acentric factor, critical temperature, molar
mass and normal boiling point [21,22].
On the other hand, some empirical and semi-empirical correla-
tions have been proposed from corresponding state equations by
Teja and Rice [23], Johnson et al. [24], and Johnson and Svreck
[25]. These models use multiple computations and uid composi-
tion as input of the model, but yet the accuracy of the results is
not acceptable [4,5].
The second type of proposed correlations is for saturated oil vis-
cosity. Presence of dissolved gas decreases the viscosity of the live
oil to a lower value than the dead oil condition. This has a signi-
cant effect on the pressure drop and should be precisely accounted
for by any viscosity model [26]. Numerous correlations have been
developed for this region, however most of these ones do not
predict the viscosity of Iranian oils viscosity satisfactorily. In order
to investigate the validity of the correlations for Iranian oils, 13
well-known correlations for saturated oil have been gathered in
this study. Only Khan et al. [27] and Labedi [16] proposed two dif-
ferent correlations for prediction of oil viscosity below bubble
point and at bubble point while others developed one correlation
Nomenclature
AARD Average Absolute Relative Deviations
API oil API gravity
E
i
percent relative error
GOR gas oil ratio, SCF/STB
LSSVM Least-Squares Supported Vector Machine
N number of data points
P pressure, MPa
P
b
bubble point pressure, MPa
R
2
squared correlation coefcients
RMSE Root Mean Square Error
SCF standard cubic feet
STB standard tank barrel
STD Standard Deviation Errors
T temperature, K
l
o
oil viscosity, cP
l
ob
bubble point oil viscosity, cP
l
od
dead oil viscosity, cP
Fig. 1. Typical viscosity trend as a function of pressure.
Table 1
The origin and PVT data ranges used in dead oil viscosity correlations.
Author Source of data T (K) API l
od
(cP)
Beal [9] US 310394 10.152 0.8651550
Beggs and Robinson [10] 294419 1658
Glaso [11] North Sea 283422 2048 0.639
Kaye [12] Offshore California 334412 741
Al-Khafaji et al. [13] 289422 1551
Petrosky [14] Gulf of Mexico 319415 2546 0.7210.25
Egbogah and Ng [15] 288353 558
Labedi [16] Libya 311425 3248 0.664.79
Kartoatmodjo and Schmidt [17] Worldwide 300433 1459 0.5586
Bennison [18] North Sea 277422 1120 6.48396
Elsharkawy and Alikhan [5] Middle East 311422 2048 0.633.7
Hossain et al. [19] Worldwide 273375 722 12451
Naseri et al. [4] Iran 314421 1744 0.7554
Alomair et al. [20] Kuwait 293433 1020 1.7811360
40 A. Hemmati-Sarapardeh et al. / Fuel 116 (2014) 3948
for saturated oil. Some correlations consider saturated oil viscosity
as a function of dead oil viscosity and solution gas oil ratio and the
others introduce it as a function of dead oil viscosity and saturation
pressure. Available correlations in literature are Chew and
Connally 1 [28], Chew and Connally 2 [28], Chew and Connally 3
[28], Beggs and Robinson [10], Al-Khafaji et al. [13], Khan et al.
[27], Petrosky [14], Labedi [16], Kartoatmodjo and Schmidt [17],
Elsharkawy and Alikhan [5], Hossain et al. [19], Naseri et al. [4],
and Bergman and Sutton [26]. Table 2 illustrates the origin and
ranges of the data used in the aforementioned correlations.
The last type is under-saturated oil viscosity correlations. Since
the solution gas oil ratio is constant in this region, pressure is the
main parameter that controls viscosity. Lots of models are pro-
posed for prediction of viscosity in this region [5,9,14,16,17,19,
27,2935]. Some of these correlations regard the viscosity as a
function of pressure, bubble point pressure, and bubble point oil
viscosity, while the others additionally have involved API oil grav-
ity and dead oil viscosity at their correlations [5,16]. Available cor-
relations for under-saturated oil viscosity are: Beal [9], Vazquez
and Beggs [35], Khan et al. [27], Petrosky [14], Labedi [16], Orbey
and Sandler [32], Kartoatmodjo and Schmidt [17], Elsharkawy
and Alikhan [5], and Hossain et al. [19]. The summery of the origin
and ranges of the data used in the aforementioned correlations are
presented in Table 3.
The aim of the present study is to develop a novel model,
namely Least Squares Supported Vector Machine (LSSVM) [36]
for predicting the oil viscosity. For this purpose, based on more
than 1000 Iranian oil reservoirs data, three new models are pro-
posed for prediction of the under-saturated, saturated and dead
oil viscosities. A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the model
is carried out to establish the adequacy and accuracy of the model.
In addition, in order to evaluate the performance of the newly pro-
posed models against the other ones, both statistical and graphical
error analyses are utilized simultaneously.
2. Model development
2.1. Database
Reliability of the models for prediction of properties and phase
behaviors of uids generally depends on the comprehensiveness of
the employed dataset for their development [3742]. Hence, more
than 1000 series of experimental PVT data of Iranian oil reservoirs
Table 2
The origin and PVT data ranges used in saturated oil viscosity correlations.
Author Source of data Solution GOR (SCF/STB) Saturation pressure (MPa) l
o
(cP)
Chew and Connally 1 [28] US 513544 0.9138.92 0.3750
Beggs and Robinson [10] 202070 0.9136.30
Al-Khafaji et al. [13] 02100
Khan et al. [27] Saudi Arabia 241901 0.7429.75 0.1377.4
Petrosky [14] Gulf of Mexico 211855 10.8565.85 0.217.4
Labedi [16] Libya 133533 0.4143.83 0.1153.72
Kartoatmodjo and Schmidt [17] Worldwide 2.3572 0.1041.74 0.16.3
Elsharkawy and Alikhan [5] Middle East 103600 0.6925.51 0.0521
Hossain et al. [19] Worldwide 19493 0.8343.24 3.6360
Naseri et al. [4] Iran 2554116 2.8940.68 0.1118.15
Bergman and Sutton [26] Worldwide 66525 0.4571.02 0.214277
Table 3
The origin and PVT data ranges used in under-saturated oil viscosity correlations.
Author Source of data P (MPa) P
b
(MPa) l
ob
(cP) l
o
(cP)
Beal [9] US 0.142127 0.16315
Vazquez and Beggs [35] Worldwide 0.8765.50 0.117148
Khan et al. [27] Saudi Arabia 0.7433.05 0.1377.4 0.1371
Petrosky [14] Gulf of Mexico 11.0370.67 10.8565.86 0.2113.546 0.224.09
Labedi [16] Libya 0.4143.84 0.1153.72
Orbey and Sandler [32] 5.10100.00 0.2173.1 0.2257.3
Kartoatmodjo and Schmidt [17] Worldwide 0.1741.47 0.1732.92 0.168184.86 0.168517.03
Elsharkawy and Alikhan [5] Middle East 8.8768.94 0.25.7
Hossain et al. [19] Worldwide 2.0723.44 0.8343.24 3.6360 3517
Table 4
Ranges and their corresponding statistical parameters of the input/output data used for developing the models.
Model Parameter Minimum Maximum Average Standard deviation
Dead oil Temperature (K) 283.15 416.48 353.06 42.84
Oil gravity (API) 17.30 43.56 29.32 7.00
Dead oil viscosity (cP) 0.39 69.50 7.41 11.44
Saturated oil viscosity Saturation pressure (MPa) 1.09 39.31 11.76 7.50
Dead oil viscosity (cP) 0.55 37.18 4.55 5.05
Saturated oil viscosity (cP) 0.18 25.58 1.92 2.59
Under-saturated oil viscosity Bubble point pressure (MPa) 5.03 35.27 17.56 7.81
Bubble point viscosity (cP) 0.18 18.16 1.62 2.19
Pressure (MPa) 5.03 86.18 25.38 11.63
Under-saturated oilviscosity (cP) 0.18 31.00 1.84 2.97
A. Hemmati-Sarapardeh et al. / Fuel 116 (2014) 3948 41
have been utilized for developing and testing the models. These
data include oil API gravity, reservoir temperature, solution gas
oil ratio, and saturation pressure. Reservoir oil viscosity at various
pressures above and below bubble point pressure was determined
using a rolling ball viscometer (Ruska, series 1602). Ranges and
their corresponding statistical parameters of the data are pre-
sented in Table 4.
It should be mentioned that the range of these data cover al-
most all Iranian oil reservoirs PVT data and consequently the
developed model based on these data could be reliable for predic-
tion of other Iranian oil reservoirs viscosity [1].
A review on literature shows that most of reservoir oil viscosity
correlations use reservoir temperature and reservoir oil API gravity
to predict dead oil viscosity while saturated pressure and dead oil
viscosity are used to estimate saturated oil viscosity. In addition,
pressures, bubble point pressure, and oil viscosity at bubble point
pressure are used to predict under-saturated oil viscosity [43]. In
this study, the aforementioned parameters are used for developing
LSSVM [36] models for prediction oil viscosity at the three regions
(i.e. dead oil viscosity, under-saturated oil viscosity and saturated
oil viscosity).
2.2. The support vector machine
The objective herein is to develop nonlinear relationships be-
tween the available experimental information considered as inputs
of the models, and the desired outputs. For this purpose, appropri-
ate mathematical tools are required. The Support Vector Machine
(SVM) is a powerful strategy developed from the machine-learning
community [36,38,44]. A SVM is a tool, mainly discussed in com-
putational science, for a set of related supervised learning methods
that analyze data and recognize patterns and are used for regres-
sion analysis. According to SVM primary formulations any function
f(x) can be regressed as follows [45]:
f x w
T
ux b 1
where w
T
, u(x), and b are the transposed output layer vector, kernel
function, and the bias, respectively. The input of the model, x, is of a
dimension N n in which N and n denote the number of data points
and number of input parameters, respectively (in case of training
set, N may be regarded as number of training set data points). In or-
der to calculate w and b Vapnik proposed minimization of the fol-
lowing cost function [45]:
cost function
1
2
w
T
c
X
N
k1
n
k
n
k
2
Table 6
Statistical parameters of the presented model for determination of dead oil viscosity.
Statistical parameter
Training set
R
2a
0.959
Average absolute relative deviation
b
21.3
Standard deviation error
c
1.79
Root mean square error
d
1.78
N
e
93
Validation set
R
2
0.986
Average absolute relative deviation 21.9
Standard deviation error 2.30
Root mean square error 2.29
N 11
Test set
R
2
0.914
N
e
11
Total
R
2
0.955
N
e
115
a
R
2
1
P
N
i
Calc:i=Est:iexp:i
2
P
N
i
Calc:i=Est:iaverageexp:i
2
.
b
%AARD
100
N
P
N
i
jCalc:i=Est:iexp:ij
exp:i
.
c
STD
1
N
P
N
i
P
N
i
Calc:i=Est:i averageCalc:i=Est:i
2
q
.
d
RMSE
P
N
i1
Calc:i=Est:iexp:i
2
N

1=2
.
e
Number of data points.
Fig. 2. Comparison between the represented/predicted results of the developed
model and the experimental data of dead oil viscosity.
Fig. 3. Relative deviations of the represented/predicted dead oil viscosity values by
the proposed model.
Table 5
The optimum values of the LSSVM [36] models parameters at three different regions.
LSSVM Model Input parameters of
model
Model parameters
c r
2
Dead oil T API 436.90 2.34
Saturated reservoir oil l
od
P 51753139815.22 11.64
Under-saturated
reservoir oil
l
ob
P
b
P 364181.17 21.45
Subjected to the following constraint:
y
k
w
T
ux
k
b 6 e n
k
; k 1; 2; . . . ; N
w
T
ux
k
b y
k
6 e n
k
; k 1; 2; . . . ; N
n
k
; n
k
6 0; k 1; 2; . . . ; N
8
>
<
>
:
3
where x
k
and y
k
are kth data point input and kth data point
output, respectively. The e is the xed precision of the function
Table 7
Comparison between the performances of LSSVM [36] model and common correla-
tions for prediction of dead oil viscosity.
Author AARD, % R
2
RMSE
Beal [9] 891 0.1088 83.14
Beggs and Robinson [10] 217 0.0376 245.05
Glaso [11] 33.41 0.9270 3.84
Kaye [12] 52.05 0.2268 10.19
Al-Khafaji et al. [13] 29.97 0.7283 6.04
Petrosky [14] 41.62 0.8695 4.18
Egbogah and Ng [15] 55.60 0.9208 3.26
Labedi [16] 178 0.3910 14.95
Kartoatmodjo and Schmidt [17] 36.89 0.9065 4.50
Bennison [18] 70.97 0.6689 12.25
Elsharkawy and Alikhan [5] 72.92 0.9065 13.25
Hossain et al. [19] 68.92 0.6000 16.24
Naseri et al. [4] 27.57 0.8233 3.88
Alomair et al. [20] 72.42 0.8275 6.36
LSSVM Model (this study) 21.2 0.955 1.82
Fig. 4. Trend of dead oil viscosity changes versus oil API gravity at different
isotherms (this study).
model and the experimental data of saturated oil viscosity.
Fig. 6. Relative deviations of the represented/predicted saturated oil viscosity
values by proposed model.
Table 8
Statistical parameters of the presented model for determination of saturated oil
viscosity.
Training set
R
2
0.988
N 323
Validation set
R
2
0.976
N 40
Test set
R
2
0.838
N 40
Total
R
2
0.979
N 403
Table 9
tions for prediction of saturated oil viscosity.
Author AARD (%) R
2
RMSE
Chew and Connally 1 [28] 29.64 0.823818 1.18
Chew and Connally 2 [28] 39.64 0.799963 1.46
Chew and Connally 3 [28] Out of range 0 Out of range
Beggs and Robinson [10] 31.90 0.532063 1.35
Al-Khafaji et al. [13] 20.79 0.799255 1.32
Khan et al. [27] Out of range 0 Out of range
Petrosky [14] 27.33 0.739977 1.14
Labedi [16] 249 0.428383 3.70
Hossain et al. [19] Out of range 0 Out of range
Naseri et al. [4] 52.32 0.567231 1.38
Bergman and Sutton [26] 26.70 0.733941 1.15
approximation. The n
k
and n
k
are slack variables. It is obvious that
when we choose a small e to develop a very accurate model, some
data points may be outside of the e precision. This may result in
infeasible solution. Therefore, we should use slack parameters to
dene the allowed margin of error. The c > 0 is the tuning parameter
of the SVM which determines the amount of the deviation from the
desired e. In other words, c is one of the tuning parameters of the
SVM. In order to minimize the cost function depicted in Eq. (2)
along with its constraints presented in Eq. (3), we should use the
Lagrangian for this problem as follows [45]:
La; a

1
2
X
N
k;l1
a
k
a
k
a
l
a
l
Kx
k
; x
l
e
X
N
k1
a
k
a
X
N
k1
y
k
a
k
a
k
4
X
N
k1
a
k
a
k
0; a
k
; a
k
2 0; c 4a
Kx
k
; x
l
ux
k
T
ux
l
; k 1; 2; . . . ; N 4b
where a
k
and a
k
are Lagrangin multipliers. Finally, the nal form of
the SVM is obtained as follows:
Fig. 7. Comparison between experimental data and predicted values provided by
new proposed LSSVM [36] model for reservoir oil viscosity of four saturated
samples .
Fig. 8. Percent relative error distribution of the most accurate saturated oil viscosity correlations and proposed LSSVM [36] model.
Table 10
Statistical parameters of the presented model for determination of under-saturated
oil viscosity.
Training set
R
2
0.999
N 418
Validation set
R
2
0.999
N 52
Test set
R
2
0.999
N 52
Total
R
2
0.999
N 522
f x
X
N
k;l1
a
k
a
k
Kx; x
k
b 5
In order to solve the problem and nd a
k
; a
k
; and b, we should solve
a quadratic programming problem which is very difcult. In order
to facilitate the original SVM algorithm, Suykens and Vandewalle
[36,44] proposed the least square modication of the SVM (LSSVM).
In their LSSVM approach, Suykens and Vandewalle [36,44] reformu-
lated the SVM as follows [45]:
Cost function
1
2
w
T
w
1
2
c
X
N
k1
e
2
k
6
Subjected to the following constraint:
Y
k
w
T
ux
k
b e
k
7
where c and e
k
are tuning parameter in LSSVM method and the er-
ror variable, respectively. The Lagrangian for this problem is as
follows:
Lw; b; e; a
1
2
w
T
w
1
2
c
X
N
k1
e
2
k

X
N
k1
a
k
w
T
ux
k
b e
k
y
k
8
where a
k
are Lagrangian multipliers. In order to solve the problem
we should equate the derivatives of Eq. (8) to zero. Therefore, the
following equations are obtained:
@L
@w
0 ) w
X
N
k1
a
k
ux
k
@L
@b
0 )
X
N
k1
a
k
0
@L
@e
k
0 ) a
k
ce
k
; k 1; 2; . . . ; N
@L
@a
k
0 ) w
T
ux
k
b e
k
y
k
0 k 1; 2; . . . ; N
8
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
<
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
:
9
As can be found from Eq. (9), there are 2 N+2 equations and 2 N+2
unknown parameters (a
k
, e
k
, w and b). Therefore, the parameters of
LSSVM can be obtained by solving the system of equations depicted
in Eq. (9) [45].
As mentioned earlier, the LSSVM has a tuning parameter c.
Since, LSSVM and SVM are both kernel-based methods, we should
consider the parameters of the kernel functions as other tuning
parameters. In case of RBF kernel function:
Kx; x
k
expjjx
k
xjj
2
=r
2
10
We will have another tuning parameter r
2
. As a result, in LSSVM
algorithm with RBF kernel function, we will have 2 tuning parame-
ters which should be obtained by minimization of the deviation of
the LSSVM model from experimental values [45].
It should be mentioned that the major advantage of the LSSVM
over the original SVM is the idea of modifying the inequality con-
straints of Eq. (3) to the equality constraints of Eq. (7). The param-
eters of the LSSVM are simply obtained by solving the system of
equations as depicted in Eq. (9) instead of solving a nonlinear qua-
dratic programming [45].
model and the experimental data of under-saturated oil viscosity.
Fig. 10. Relative deviations of the represented/predicted under-saturated oil
viscosity values by the proposed model.
Fig. 11. Comparison between experimental data and predicted values provided by
the proposed LSSVM [36] model for four under-saturated oil viscosity samples.
Table 11
tions for prediction of under-saturated oil viscosity.
Author AARD (%) R
2
RMSE
Beal [9] 1.85 0.99783 0.133
Vazquez and Beggs [35] 5.23 0.97138 0.575
Khan et al. [27] 3.24 0.98812 0.298
Petrosky [14] 6.71 0.83011 0.940
Labedi [16] 1078 0.09697 43.557
Orbey and Sandler [32] 1.95 0.96242 0.495
Hossain et al. [19] 4.70 0.99481 0.225
2.3. Computational procedure
In the next step, the database is divided into three sub data sets
including the Training set, the Optimization set, and the Test
set. Generally, the Training set is used to generate the model
structure, the Optimization set is applied for optimization of
the model and the Test (prediction) set is used to investigate
its prediction capability and validity [3739,46]. The database
was split randomly into three sub data sets: For this purpose, about
80%, 10%, and 10% of the main data set were randomly selected for
the Training set, the Optimization set, and the Test set,
respectively. The effect of the percent allocation of the three sub
data sets from the database on the accuracy of the nal model
has been studied elsewhere [37,39]. In distribution of the data
through the three sub data sets, we generally perform many distri-
butions to avoid the local accumulations of the data in the feasible
region of the problem. As a result, the acceptable distribution is the
one with homogeneous accumulations of the data on the domain
of the three sub data sets [39].
3. Results and discussion
In this study, three LSSVM [36] models were developed to pre-
dict the viscosity of dead oil, saturated reservoir oil and under-sat-
urated reservoir oil, as mentioned earlier. Furthermore, prediction
performance of the newly proposed models was compared against
all well-known previously published correlations by means of sta-
tistical and graphical error analyses.
The values of the probable global optima of all three models
including r
2
and c are reported in Table 5. It should be stated that
determination of these values are not generally simple and the
numbers of the reported digits are normally obtained by sensitivity
analysis of the overall errors of the optimization procedure to the
corresponding values [37,47]. Furthermore, Simulating Annealing
(SA) technique was applied in this study [48,49].
Table 6 indicates the statistical parameters of the proposed
model for prediction of dead oil viscosity, including Average Abso-
lute Relative Deviations (AARD), Root Mean Square Errors (RMSE),
squared correlation coefcients (R
2
), and Standard Deviation Errors
(STD). A comparison between the predicted dead oil viscosity val-
ues and the experimental values and relative error distribution for
experimental data points are demonstrated in Figs. 2 and 3,
respectively.
To investigate the validity of the proposed LSSVM [36] model
for dead oil viscosity, all previously published correlations have
been selected for comparison. As mentioned earlier, dead oil vis-
cosity is generally a difcult property to be correlated. Table 7
shows the results of all the correlations compared to the LSSVM
[36] model. According to this table, the developed model gives
an AARD of 21.2%, R
2
of 0.955, and RMSE of 1.82.
Fig. 4 shows the trend of changes in dead oil viscosity with
increasing API gravity of oil at various temperatures. As a general
rule, dead oil viscosity decreases with an increase in the oil API
gravity [50,51]. Furthermore, a general reduction in dead oil vis-
cosity is expected with increasing temperature, and this effect is
more sensible at lower temperatures [50,51]. As can be seen from
Fig. 4, this trend is captured by the proposed LSSVM [36] model for
dead oil viscosity.
Next model was developed for estimation of saturated reservoir
oil viscosity. Comparison between the results of predictions made
by proposed LSSVM [36] model, and the corresponding experimen-
tal viscosity values for saturated reservoir oil is illustrated in Fig. 5.
Furthermore, Fig. 6 shows relative error distribution of proposed
model. Its statistical parameters for prediction of saturated reser-
voir oil viscosity are reported in Table 8.
The efciency of the model for saturated oil viscosity was also
tested against all well-known correlations and results are dis-
played in Table 9. According to this table the values of AARD, R
2
,
and RMSE are 14.6%, 0.979, and 0.38 respectively. Statistical and
graphical error analysis demonstrate that the proposed LSSVM
[36] model outperforms previously published correlations .
To make sure that the proposed model is reliable, the validity of
model should be checked. For this purpose, the resulted trend from
the proposed model [36] was checked by four experimental data
samples. Fig. 7 demonstrates experimental and predicted viscosi-
ties made by the new LSSVM [36] model for four samples. It is
Fig. 12. Percent relative error distribution of the most accurate under-saturated oil viscosity correlations and the proposed LSSVM [36] model.
evident by increasing pressure ultimately to the bubble point pres-
sure, viscosity of saturated reservoir oil decreases. This developed
model successfully captured this trend and made predictions mar-
velously in close agreement with experimental data (see Fig. 7).
Moreover, the accuracy of the proposed model corresponding to
the ratio of pressure to the bubble point pressure, and also three
of the most precise correlations namely, Elsharkawy and Alikhan
[5], Al-Khafaji et al. [13], and Kartoatmodjo and Schmidt [17] were
visually checked. Fig. 8, shows this comparison. It is clear that the
proposed model has the smaller error range and least scatter
around zero error line.
The last model is constructed for prediction of under-saturated
oil viscosity. Statistical parameters of the developed model for esti-
mation of under-saturated reservoir oil viscosity are presented in
Table 10. A comparison between estimated values of under-satu-
rated reservoir oil viscosity by the recommended model and exper-
imental values is illustrated in Fig. 9. A tight cloud of points about
45 line for training, validation and testing data sets indicates the
robustness of this model. The percent relative error distribution
for all experimental data points is shown in Fig. 10. In the case of
trend analysis, the behavior of model [36] prediction is in good
agreement with the experimental data (see Fig. 11). In order to
investigate the efciency of the proposed model against all previ-
ously published ones, statistical parameters are displayed in Ta-
ble 11. This table reveals that the proposed models efciency is
the best. Furthermore, the corresponding diagram for relative error
distribution versus the ratio of pressure to bubble point pressure is
illustrated in Fig. 12. In this case, the relative error distribution of
the new model is closer to the zero line in comparison with the
other ones.
4. Conclusions
Several empirical viscosity correlations were evaluated using a
large data bank of the Iranian oil reservoirs. Initially, the previously
published correlations were analyzed for Iranian oil reservoir
in three regions including, under-saturated, saturated and dead
oil. Average Absolute Relative Deviation has been considered as
the main screening criteria. It was found that for the dead oil con-
dition, all the published correlations have high error, however Na-
seri et al. [4], Glaso [11], and Al-Khafaji et al. [13] exhibit more
accuracy for prediction the dead oil viscosity of Iranian oil reser-
voirs. For Iranian oil reservoirs, saturated oil viscosity correlations
show more accuracy than the dead oils ones and Elsharkawy and
Alikhan [5], Al-Khafaji et al. [13], and Kartoatmodjo and Schmidt
[17] correlations give the best results for this region. At the next
step, all the correlations were tested for under-saturated oil region.
Except the Labedi [16] correlation, all the correlations show
acceptable accuracy, however, Elsharkawy and Alikhan [5], Beal
[9], and Orbey and Sandler [32] correlations had the highest accu-
racies among the others. Finally, LSSVMmodels were developed for
predicting oil viscosity at three conditions of dead oil, under-satu-
rated oil, saturated oil, using a large data bank of Iranian oil reser-
voirs. The range of used data [1] for developing the new models
cover all Iranian oil reservoirs and consequently, these developed
models can be reliable for predicting of other Iranian oil reservoirs
viscosities. However, for application of these developed LSSVM
[36] models, the limitations of the data ranges upon with the mod-
els have been developed, should be considered. In addition, a com-
parison among the LSSVM [36] models and other well-known
correlations was presented and it was found that the accuracy of
the proposed models was better than the previously published
correlations; however the present model uses just two parameters
(r
2
and c). Moreover, it was demonstrated that the proposed
models are capable of simulating the actual physical trend of the
oil viscosity with variation of oil API gravity, temperature, and
pressure. The LSSVM [36] models can be implemented in any
reservoir simulator software and it is expected that they provide
better accuracy and performance for crude oil viscosity than the
previously published ones.
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