Regarding the growth of global energy consumption and the paucity of light crude oil

extracting and using heavy and extra heavy crude oil has received much more attention

but the application of this kind of oil is complicated due to its very high molecular weight. High viscosity and low flowability complicate the transportation of heavy and extra heavy crude oil. Accordingly

it is essential to reduce the viscosity of heavy and extra heavy crude oil through in-situ operations or immediate actions after extraction to reduce costs. Numerical simulations are influential methods

because they reduce calculation time and costs. In this study

the cracking of extra heavy crude oil using computational fluid dynamics is simulated

and a unique kinetic model is proposed based on experimental procedures to predict the behavior of extra heavy crude oil cracking reaction. Moreover

the hydrodynamics and heat transfer of the system and influence of nanocatalysts and temperature on the upgrading of crude oil are studied. The geometry of a reactor is produced using commercial software

and some experiments are performed to examine the validity and accuracy of the numerical results. Th

e findings reveal that there is a good agreement between the numerical and experimental results. Furthermore

to investigate the main factors affecting the process

sensitivity analysis is adopted. Results show that type of catalyst and concentration of catalyst are the parameters that influence the viscosity reduction of extra heavy crude oil the most. The findings further revealed that when using a 25 nm SiO

2

nanocatalyst

a maximum viscosity reduction of 98.67% is observed at 623 K. Also

a catalyst concentration of 2.28wt% is best for upgrading extra heavy crude oil. The results obtained through sensitivity analysis

simulation model

and experiments represent effectual information for the design and development of high performance upgrading processes for energy applications.