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Numerical Simulation of In-situ Combustion
in a Fracture-Porous Medium System
O. Cazarez-Candia, P.V. Verazaluce-Barragán and J.R. Hernández-Pérez
Abstract
In this work, the numerical simulation of in-situ combustion in a
fracture-porous medium system at laboratory scale, was done. The simulations were
developed in a commercial reservoir simulator designed to evaluate oil recovery
by thermal methods. The simulator involves the mass, momentum (Darcy law) and
energy balance equations for multiphase and multicomponent flows. The main aim
of this work was to study the effect of the airflow rate and oil saturation on the in-situ
combustion behaviour. In the first stage of this study, the in-situ combustion was
simulated in a homogeneous porous medium and the simulation was validated using
experimental data. In a second stage, such simulation was modified in order to incor-
porate fractures in the porous medium. It was found that the oxygen diffusion from
fractures to porous medium controls the in-situ combustion in fractured systems.
Moreover, it is necessary to restrict the injected air flow rate due to the breakthrough
phenomenon and because the oil recovery is not substantially increased for larger
flow rates.
1 Introduction
In-situ combustion (ISC) is a thermal oil recovery technique used in the petroleum
industry. Mainly, this method has been applied in heavy-oil fields. In order to evaluate
if a given oil reservoir is a candidate for an ISC project, it is common to study the
propagation of the combustion front in small multiphase systems known as in-situ
combustion tubes.
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