Toe-to-heel air injection method is a modified pattern in situ combustion which is applicable for the recovery of heavy oil reservoirs. A fixed bed of catalyst around the production well can improve performance and quality of the produced oil; however, pilot tests revealed rapid deactivation of the catalyst bed. Dispersion of fine catalyst particles (ideally nanoparticles) around the production well by carrier fluids may reduce the deactivation problem. In the first step of this study, three nanoparticles, namely calcite, montmorillonite (MMT), and Cloisite 20A, were dispersed in a heavy oil as candidate catalysts and subjected to simultaneous thermal analysis. Kinetic parameters of different reaction zones were obtained by the Coats and Redfern model, and it was observed that 0.5 wt % of the MMT more effectively catalyzed the combustion reactions. In the second step, selected sample was subjected to multiple heating rate experiments to study detailed kinetic effects. Results were analyzed by Vyazovkin is...