Abstract
Heavy oil is one of the most useful energy resource special in the times of crises when other resources are not present in profusion. However, Occurrence of heavy oil in unconsolidated sands is one the most challenging factor to recover the heavy oil. Therefore, in this study the main focus is derived towards the extraction of heavy oil with optimistic procedure called air injection. For the research, a reactor assembly was developed for the experimental work on air (21% oxygen) injection into heavy oil (12.59 °API) reservoir. Total 13 kinetics runs were conducted on unconsolidated cores by varying the parameters involved system pressure, flow rate (air flux), oxidation temperature (heat input), and rock formation (sand matrix). It was found that the process is very dependent on operating conditions employed, as oxygen consumption rate was very dependent on air flux. Increase of air flux from 15.19 to 22.78 m 3 /m 2 -hr resulted in slightly increasing rates of oxygen consumption over the temperature range under investigation. The temperature difference also shows great effect on the high temperature oxidation. The pressure and porous media also has great impact on the combustion behavior. The influence of individual parameter was obtained from analysis of the inlet oxygen and composition of flue gases from the combustion cell. Indeed, the oxygen conversion was too less to evaluate the kinetic data at temperature less than 250 °C while for oxidation reactions, the oxygen statistics analyzed from temperature above than 350 °C. The experimental results reveal that the average maximum peak temperature was 440 °C, and the oxidation reaction process at high temperature was very effective in terms of produced carbon oxides with an average percentage of 9.5% CO 2 , 5.5% CO in flue gases. Oil displacement was observed from the analysis of flue gases, consequently; incremental oil recovery was achieved between 56%-80% under high temperature oxidation (HTO) conditions.
Highlights
Various challenges due to decline in oil discoveries, EOR technologies will offered by heavy oil recovery are much more convoluted to perform a significant part in years to come to acquire the energy recover from the reservoirs than medium and light oil
Enhanced Oil Recovery aims to enhance the heavy oil left by natural displacement and secondary recovery
Total 13 kinetic runs were performed by the use of air injection method for the recovery of heavy crude oil (12.59 °API)
Summary
For the world and approximately 67% of the world’s energy comes medium/heavy oils and tar sands, thermal methods are mostly from oil and natural gas [1]. Non-thermal processes are usually subsurface reservoirs following by primary and secondary applied but rarely, these methods for heavy oils have been recovery techniques. In the early 1900s, an unintentional discovery of air injection (or oxygen-enriched air) was existed and introduced into an oil reservoir. While, it has been aggressively, successfully and profitably advanced as a thermal process for heavy oils in the 1960s and afterwards [5]. Air is accessible as an inexpensive injection fluid, it does not cause any restriction in supply
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