Thermal Recovery Processes

In-Situ Combustion
Reference;
Enhanced Oil Recovery
Don W. Green
G. Paul Willhite
 In-Situ Combustion
• In-situ combustion is a displacement process in which an oxygen-containing gas
is injected into a reservoir where it reacts with the crude oil to create a high-
temperature combustion front that is propagated through the reservoir. In most
cases, the injected gas is air, although the use of 100% oxygen has been reported.
The fuel consumed by the combustion front is a residuum produced by a complex
process of cracking, coking, and steam distillation that occurs ahead of the
combustion front. In-situ combustion is possible if the crude-oil/rock combination
produces enough fuel to sustain the combustion front. In-situ combustion field
tests have been carried out in reservoirs containing gravities from 9 to 40 °API.
• Forward and reverse combustion have been studied in the laboratory and in field
tests. Reverse combustion has not been developed commercially and will not be
discussed further(by this textbook).
There are two types of forward combustion:
 dry combustion.
 wet combustion.

In wet combustion, water is injected simultaneously with the injected gas or alternated in
slugs. Significant improvements in process performance have been obtained in laboratory
experiments and field projects with the wet-combustion process.

In-situ combustion is not a widely used recovery process because steamdrive is usually
preferred when both processes are technically feasible. However, steamdrive is limited to;

 reservoirs in which pressures are in the range of 2,500 psi or less and
 at depths on the order of 3,000 ft because of wellbore heat losses.

Consequently, in-situ combustion is the only thermal recovery process that is potentially
useful for deep, high-pressure reservoirs.
Although there have been many field tests of in-situ combustion, the number of
commercial scale projects of in-situ combustion was reported to be four.
 Process Mechanisms—Dry Combustion

In-situ combustion occurs when oxygen reacts with the coke contained within the
pore space of a porous rock to create a self-sustaining combustion front. Ignition
may be induced through electrical or gas igniters or may be spontaneous if the
crude oil has sufficient reactivity. When the reservoir is relatively thin, the
displacement process behaves like a frontal-advance process, with the temperature
and saturation distribution depicted in Figure below. A narrow combustion zone
forms where temperatures may be very high. The injected air is preheated to
combustion temperature (650 to 1,200°F) as it flows through the rock behind the
combustion zone. Combustion products, primarily water (as water vapor), CO2,
and CO, flow ahead of the slowly moving (0.125 to 1.0 ft/D) front. Oxygen not
consumed by the combustion front and nitrogen (if air is injected) also flow with
the combustion gases.
In a fully developed front, hot combustion gases strip light ends from the crude oil
flowing ahead of the front (because of the high mobility of gas compared with that of
liquids). Hydrocarbons stripped by the hot combustion gases and water vapor
condense to form a small steam plateau of hot water and light hydrocarbon banks, as
depicted in Fig. above. The oil saturation that remains after steam stripping is subjected
to thermal cracking as the combustion front approaches, leaving a residual deposit on
the sand grains that is rich in carbon. This residuum becomes the fuel for the process.
In general, no more than 5 to 6% of the oil is consumed. Hydrocarbon products and
other compounds released by the cracking process (SO2, CO, CH4, and H2) join the
combustion gases and are either absorbed by crude oil ahead of the front or are
produced in the effluent. In dry forward combustion, the fuel must be consumed for
the combustion front to advance. Thus, the rate of frontal advance is controlled by fuel
availability and the rate that oxygen is delivered to the burning front.
When the reservoir is thick and has good vertical permeability, gravity segregation or override
occurs. The combustion front migrates to the top of the reservoir where it stretches out across the
reservoir, as shown in Fig. below. The combustion front expands horizontally and vertically in a
complicated manner. The reservoir under the combustion front is heated by conduction, which is
particularly important in heavy-oil reservoirs where large changes in oil viscosity occur with
relatively small changes in temperature.

Breakthrough of the combustion front into a production well occurs in most projects. In thin
reservoirs, most of the oil displaced by the combustion front will be produced before
breakthrough. Production wells may be lost when the combustion front breaks through if not
managed properly. Three factors control the in-situ combustion process: fuel availability, air
requirement, and air flux.
 Fuel Availability
The term “fuel availability” refers to the amount of fuel laid down by the advancing combustion
front. Fuel availability is expressed in several different units such as;

m = lbm fuel/ft3 reservoir volume burned

Two distinct combustion regimes are known to exist;

 When combustion temperatures exceed approximately 650°F, the combustion reaction is

called high-temperature oxidation (HTO) and the combustion products are CO2, CO, and
water.

 At temperatures less than 650°F, water and oxygenated hydrocarbons are formed. This
combustion regime is known as low-temperature oxidation (LTO).
HTO
Fuel availability under the conditions of HTO is usually determined from the analysis of
laboratory combustion experiments with the reservoir rock and crude oil. The most common
experiment is to carry out a material balance on the effluent gases collected during a combustion-
tube experiment. It consists of a thin-walled inner tube 2 to 4 in. in diameter that contains the
porous material. The inner tube is instrumented with thermocouples to determine the
temperature distribution as the combustion front advances through the tube. In small-diameter
tubes, heat loss is minimized by insulating the tube and operating the combustion front at high
velocities. Combustion-tube experiments are run vertically from the top down to minimize
gravity effects.

In-situ combustion is initiated by use of an electric heater to heat the air and inlet end of the
porous rock to a high temperature. The heater is turned off once a sustained combustion front
develops. The air-injection rate is held constant at the inlet of the tube. Inlet and outlet gas rates
and compositions are measured as a function of time. A steady rate of combustion is established
relatively soon after ignition.
Combustion gases contain N2, O2, CO2, CO, and H2O. Concentration of O2 is usually small. To
determine the fuel availability, it is necessary to make some assumptions about the combustion
reactions. In HTO, it is assumed that;

 All hydrogen in the fuel reacts with oxygen to produce water.

 All carbon in the fuel is assumed to be converted to CO or CO2, which are recovered in the
produced gases.

Carbon dioxide can dissolve in crude oil with substantial reduction in oil viscosity.

However, in laboratory combustion-tube tests, the entire porous rock is usually swept by the
combustion front so that dissolved CO2 is effectively displaced by the combustion front.
Methane is observed occasionally in the produced gases and can be accounted for in material-
balance calculations. In a reservoir environment, hydrocarbon gases would most likely be
dissolved in the crude oil ahead of the front and would not be detected.
The composition of the fuel is not known but is assumed to be represented as a hypothetical
hydrocarbon with the chemical formula CHFHC, where FHC is the atomic ratio of hydrogen to
carbon in the fuel. The high temperature combustion of CH FHC when the combustion products
are water, CO2, and CO is represented by

where nO2 = moles of oxygen reacting, nCO2 = moles of CO2 in the combustion gases, nCO = moles
of CO in the combustion gases, and FHC = atomic ratio of hydrogen to carbon in the fuel.

This definition is useful because the composition of the produced gas is determined as mole
fraction or mole percent. The value of m is computed directly from the produced-gas analysis
A mole balance on carbon shows that

A mole balance on oxygen yields the following relationships:

After different substitutions;

When the oxygen is not totally consumed, an oxygen usage efficiency can be introduced to
measure the extent of combustion. Let

The injected gas is usually air but may be enriched with oxygen in some cases. The oxygen
usage efficiency is determined from the analysis of produced gases.
where yiO2 = average mole fraction of oxygen in the injected gas, y pO2 = average mole fraction
of oxygen in the produced gas, ni = moles of gas injected during a specified time interval, and
np = moles of produced gas during a specified time interval. When the injected gas contains
nitrogen, the nitrogen flows through the combustion front as an inert gas and is completely
recovered in the produced gas. Consequently, a mole balance on nitrogen produces the
relationship between ni and np given by

where yiN2 = mole fraction of nitrogen in the injected gas and ypN2 = mole fraction of nitrogen
in the produced gas. A general equation for the oxygen usage efficiency:

If air is the injected gas,

when the injected gas is 100% oxygen, the oxygen use is given by
 The hydrogen/carbon (H/C) ratio is determined from a material balance on the hydrogen and the carbon
oxides, which are produced by HTO. All hydrogen in the fuel reacts with oxygen to produce water, which
is not completely recovered or measured. Thus, hydrogen consumption is determined by the material
balance on oxygen. The oxygen that is consumed appears as CO 2, CO, and water. Hydrogen consumption is
overestimated by this balance because some of the oxygen is consumed in low-temperature reactions where
oxygen combines with hydrocarbon to produce oxygenated compounds. For this reason, hydrogen is
referred to as apparent hydrogen consumption. Writing a balance, the H/C ratio is given by

For the case in which the injected gas is pure oxygen, the above equation becomes

When air is injected (yiO2 = 0.21 and yiN2 = 0.79), the apparent H/C ratio can be computed directly from
combustion-gas analysis with

where CO2 = mol% of CO2 in produced gas, CO = mol% of CO in produced gas, and O 2 = mol%
of O2 in produced gas.
Fuel availability can be computed from the analysis of combustion-tube data over a specified period of time. The
fuel availability from the combustion-tube experiment is defined by

where wf = mass of carbon and hydrogen consumed when V b (in cubic feet) of reservoir was burned. In a
combustion tube run, np moles of gas with an average composition of y pCO2, ypCO, and ypO2 are produced during a
time interval ∆t when the combustion front is propagated through V b. It is assumed that the combustion tube is
operating under steady-state conditions so that the velocity of the combustion front is constant. Under these
conditions,

where x1 and x2 = locations of the combustion front at times t1 and t2, respectively; A = cross-sectional area of the
tube; and vf = average velocity of the combustion front. The fuel consumed is the sum of the mass of carbon and
hydrogen consumed. Applying a material balance to the produced gases, the mass of carbon and hydrogen
consumed is given by
 Example—Computation of Fuel Availability From Results of an In-Situ Combustion Run.

A combustion-tube run was carried out with reservoir rock and fluid to determine the fuel availability
for an in-situ combustion project (Nelson and McNeil 1961). The combustion tube was 4 in. in diameter
and 6 ft long and was packed with formation sand. Porosity of the packed bed was 35%. During the
combustion run, the volume of the produced gas was 190 scf (at 60°F and 14.7 psia) measured on a dry
basis. Table below gives compositions of injected and produced gases. It is assumed that the combustion
front propagated through the sandpack at a constant velocity. Determine the fuel availability from the
data as lbm fuel/ft3 rock, lbm fuel/100 lbm rock, and lbm fuel/acre-ft of reservoir burned. For this
example, the grain density of the sand is 2.65 g/cm3.
Solution. The H/C ratio is computed directly from the analysis of the produced gas.

Substitution of gas compositions (in mole percent) into

The value of m is computed from

The weight of fuel consumed is computed from

The total volume of produced gas (dry basis) is 190 scf. Because volumes are given at
standard conditions, it will be necessary to convert volume to moles. The molar volume at
60°F and 14.7 psia is 379 ft3 /lbm mol. Thus, during the time interval represented by the data
 The weight of fuel consumed can be computed from

To express fuel consumption in terms of the volume of reservoir rock burned, it is necessary
to compute fuel availability in terms of burned volume. For this computation, assume that the
entire sandpack was burned during the time the 190 scf of produced gas was measured. Thus,

Fuel availability is computed from

Fuel availability may also be expressed in other units, as discussed earlier. For example, the
fuel availability as lbm fuel/100 lbm rock can be computed from the data. First, it is necessary
to determine the mass of the reservoir rock in the burned volume

Fuel availability may also be expressed in terms of acre-feet of burned reservoir volume, as
indicated in the following.
The oxygen usage efficiency for this combustion-tube run may be calculated using data from
Table, ypO2 = 0.011 and ypN2 = 0.842.

The fuel availability determined from combustion-tube runs, mE, must be adjusted to reservoir
conditions when the porosity of the porous material in the combustion tube is not equal to the
porosity of the reservoir rock. Nelson and McNeil (1961) introduced the correction factor to
account for differences between the reservoir porosity, ϕ R, and that of the combustion-tube
experiment, ϕE .