Chen, Zhangxing (John)Cheng, Yajie2018-06-262018-06-262018-06-19http://hdl.handle.net/1880/106785Grosmont is a large carbonate reservoir with 407 billion barrels of bitumen in place. However, it has not been commercially developed currently due to its extremely heterogeneous environment with various porosity types. A 3D heterogeneous carbonate model with high permeability conduits representing the Mclean pilot is built to investigate different recovery strategies including steam-based thermal schemes and solvent-aided methods. A vertical well CSS has severe steam override phenomenon and a SAGD process is extremely sensitive to its steam chamber which is hardly formed evenly in Grosmont. An improved hybrid SAGD in a staggered pattern that promotes lateral and downward sweep and retains more heat regardless of its steam chamber shape is presented and studied. Furthermore, a lower density and saturation temperature light solvent-aided process performs especially well in a heterogeneous carbonate reservoir with high permeability conduits. Parameter sensitivity effects are analyzed for each recovery strategy. The Brinkman-Stokes equations are tested in a 2D synthetic carbonate model, showing its possibility to describe the multi-physical flow in both free flow fractures and porous matrix. The application range and validity of Brinkman-Stokes multi-physical flow on karstified carbonates are discussed.engUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.Engineering--ChemicalEngineering--Petroleummaster thesis10.11575/PRISM/32011