Application of Fuzzy C-means algorithm as a novel approach to predict solubility of hydrocarbons in carbon dioxide

In the recent years, declination of oil reservoir causes the importance of researches on enhancement of oil recovery processes become more important. One of wide applicable approaches in enhancement of oil recovery is carbon dioxide injection which becomes interested because of relative low cost, good displacement and environmentally aspects. The injection of carbon dioxide to oil reservoir causes the lighter hydrocarbons of crude oil are extracted by CO2. This phenomena can be affected by various factors such the solubility of hydrocarbons in carbon dioxide so in the present investigation Fuzzy c-means (FCM) as a novel approach for estimation of solubility of alkanes in carbon dioxide in terms of temperature, pressure and carbon number of alkane were utilized. The predicting algorithm FCM has reliable ability to estimate solubility based on graphical and statistical results. The coefficient of determination (R-2) for training and testing data are calculated as 0.9856 and 0.9529 respectively.