An in-situ combustion simulator for enhanced oil recovery

Oklany, JSFA

Abstract

A multi-dimensional three phase flow simulator is written to
simulate the process of in-situ combustion. It has six components
(oxygen, inert gas, a light oil, a heavy oil, water, and coke). The
inert gas consists of all the noncondensible gases other than oxygen.
The vaporization and condensation of both water and oil is governed by
vapour-liquid equilibria, using temperature and pressure dependent
equilibrium coefficients. Splitting of the oil into fractions is done
to include the distillation effect.
The model includes four chemical reactions. These represent in
turn the formation of coke from the heavy oil, the oxidation of the
coke, and the oxidation of the light and the heavy oil. Heat
transport is assumed to take place by convection and conduction. The
effects of gravity, capillary pressure between any two fluid phases,
and heat losses to the surrounding rock via conduction are also
included.
The model is validated using the ISCOM simulator. This has been
carried out by comparing the results from the present simulator with
these from similar calculations performed using the ISCOM simulator.
ISCOM is a fully implicit multi-dimensional finite difference general
thermal simulator developed by the computing modelling group (CMG) at
Calgary. This comparison is needed in order to establish confidence
In the predictive capability of the present model for a particular
reservoir.
In addition, a comprehensive study of the effect of the main
input parameters on the performance characteristics of the in-situ
combustion process is carried out. This study is made in order to
indicate which data are "important" in the sense of having a
significant influence on the performance characteristics of the
process and to test the robustness of the program to changes in the
input parameters.

Citation

Oklany, J. An in-situ combustion simulator for enhanced oil recovery. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 18, 2011
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 18, 2011
• Award Date: Jan 1, 1992