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affected. This means that the amount of produced coke is almost the same for oil
saturation values of 40, 50 and 65.4. Then, the amount of energy release from the
coke combustion is similar. Thus, temperature profiles should be similar, as shown
in Fig.
8
(at 12h).
Note that although the total oil recovery factor is similar for oil saturation values
of 40, 50 and 65.4, its behavior is different along the time. For large oil saturations,
the most oil is produced at short times. For instance, at 12h. we have an oil recovery
factor of 75% of a total of 92% for an oil saturation of 65.4, but we have only an oil
recovery factor of 23% of a total of 68% for an oil saturation of 20.
5 Conclusions
In this work the numerical simulation of in-situ combustion in a fracture-porous
medium system at laboratory scale, was done. It was found that in a fractured sys-
tem, the oil recovery factor increases when air flow rate increases, however exist an
optimum flow rate value for which: (1) the oil recovery is high, and (2) the oxygen
transport from the fracture to the porous zone is high without oxygen breakthrough.
The results of this work show that the oxygen diffusion from fractures to porous
mediumcontrols the in-situ combustion in fractured systems. This because the extinc-
tion of the combustion front occurs when a small amount of oxygen comes into the
matrix, and oxygen breakthrough occurs when a large amount of oxygen is injected.
On the other hand, as the initial oil saturation is larger, the oil recovery factor is
larger; however, for oil saturations larger than 40%, the total oil recovery factor is
little affected.
References
Awoleke OG, Castanier LM, Kovscek AR (2010) An experimental investigation of in-situ combus-
tion in heterogeneous media. In: Canadian unconventional resources and international petroleum
conference. No. 137608-MS. Canadian society for unconventional gas/society of petroleum engi-
neers, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, pp 19-21
Computer Modelling Group (2008) STARS user's guide. Advanced process and thermal reservoir
simulator, version
Fadaei H, Castanier L, Kamp AM, Debenest G, Quintard M, Renar G (2009) Experimetal and
numerical analysis of in-situ combustion in a fracture core. SPE J 1411117:358-373
GreavesM, Javanmardi G, FieldRW(1991) In situ combustion (isc) in fractured heavy oil reservoirs.
In: 6th European IOR-symposium. Stavanger, Norway, 21-23 May 1991
Kumar M (1987) Simulation of laboratory in-situ combustion data and effect of process variations.
Paper SPE 16027-MS presented at the SPE Symposium on reservoir simulation, San Antonio,
Texas, USA, 1-4 February. doi
:
10.2118/16027-MS
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