Paper ID : 20100582 Reservoir Rock Influence on Air Injection Process: A laboratory investigation

Air injection process has been a proven enhanced oil recovery technique for light-oil heterogeneous reservoirs in which oil reacts with oxygen of injected air to produce flue gases and different mechanisms are involved to push the oil towards producer. Some times the injected/reacted agents may alter or influence the process and it will demonstrate differently from predicted profiles. The composition of reservoir rock is the main element which show its influence when external agent is injected into reservoir. Combustion tube runs as well as Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) experiments were demonstrated that oil and mixture of core & silica in different ratios shows significant variations in results. Dry and wet combustion tube runs revealed that the minerals present in the core played an important role in aggravating the reactions and lay down of high fuel on reservoir rock surface. DSC experiments were conducted on different ratios of reservoir rock and silica sand. The study indicates reduction in activation energy when rock material proportion increased to higher side. This phenomenon happens due to presence of clay mineral in the rock. The clay mineral acts as a catalyst and reactions are more rapid in presence of catalytic material. Large surface area of some minerals (mostly clay minerals) also increase high amount of fuel deposition on grain surface during combustion. Occurrence of these minerals in reservoir rock influences the process and has significant effect on combustion parameters. These changes lead to high temperature combustion due to high quantity of fuel (coke) generation, this leads to reduction in the velocity of propagation of combustion front.