The Study On Burning Front Stability Of Light Oil In-situ Combustion

Waterflooding technology has been widely applied to develop low permeability reservoir for a long time in China,leading to many oil fields entering high water-cut period too early.It's not efficient to still inject water to produce oil,therefore we must explore a better technology to enhance oil recovery.This paper investigates the possibility of light oil in-situ combustion.Thermo Gravimetric Analyzer(TGA)and differential scanning calorimetry(DSC)were used to study the high temperature oxidation(HTO)characteristics of light oil.Then,high pressure combustion tube facility was used to investigate the burning front stability of light oil,and determine the fundamental parameters of light oil in-situ combustion.3D physical modeling system of in-situ combustion facility was further used to study the flooding zone of light oil,and characterize the burning front distribution.The study on HTO kinetics shows that the reaction activation energy of light oil was similar as heavy oil,but the heat release of light oil is half of heavy oil.Through the experiment on high pressure combustion tube,we found that burning front can move forward after the successful ignition of light oil.The CO2 concentration at outlet and low H/C ratio further proved that the reaction belongs to HTO.However,the contrast experiment shows that the stability of the burning front for light oil can only be sustained under high permeability reservoir.In 3D physical modeling system,light oil can be lit and keep burning,the burning front could move forward based on the temperature field.After the 3D model was opened,we found that the light oil in-situ combustion had similar zones as heavy oil.Generally,the experiments of oxidation dynamic prove the in-situ combustion technology can be applied for light oil,and the combustion tube experiments provided significant parameters for actual field in-situ combustion projects.