Comparative Kinetic Study on Heavy Oil Oxidation in the Presence of Nickel Tallate and Cobalt Tallate

Abstract

© 2019 American Chemical Society. A remarkable feature of heavy oil oxidation during the in situ combustion process is the difficulty in maintaining combustion front to flow throughout the reservoir. Recent developments suggest the use of catalysts regarding this issue. Previous works have been limited by the catalyst choice. Moreover, many research works have failed to provide a catalyst that meets the requirements of efficiency, low-cost, and positive impact on the surrounding. This paper presents new type of catalysts based on tallate, each combined with nickel and cobalt, respectively, as highly efficient catalysts for the oxidation of heavy oil. We have compared the effect of each catalyst using differential scanning calorimetry to highlight kinetic parameters of each process by the Kissinger method. In addition, we employed thermogravimetric analysis and scanning electron microscopy to investigate the behavior of catalysts during the process. The obtained results showed a similar high efficiency of both precatalysts by decreasing the activation energy of the high-temperature oxidation region, increasing the preexponential factors of both high- A nd low-temperature oxidation regions, and increasing their reaction rate constants. Moreover, the precatalysts used transformed in situ to nanoparticles during the heavy oil oxidation process.