Effect of clay of alekseevsky field on crude oil combustion by tg-ftir

Abstract

© 2019, International Multidisciplinary Scientific Geoconference. All rights reserved. Thermal methods have attracted a significant attention for the extraction of high-viscosity oil and natural bitumen. One of the promising methods for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is in-situ combustion (ISC). In the reservoir, the combustion process occurred in the porous media of rock. As we all know that rock contains different minerals that may influence the crude oil combustion characteristics when air is injected into the heavy oil reservoir. Thus, it is important to determine the influence of various types of rock materials on the thermal behavior of heavy oils. Thermogravimetry coupled with Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (TG-FTIR) technique has been proved and widely used for the investigation on the oxidation/thermal pyrolysis process of fossil fuel. In this study, the effects of clay of Alekseevsky field on the oxidation behavior of Iraq heavy oil were investigated by TG-FTIR technique. For pure crude oil, three reaction intervals were detected from TG-DTG curves, which are low-temperature oxidation (LTO), fuel deposition (FD) and high-temperature oxidation (HTO). However, with the addition of Alekseevsky clay, the FD process in DTG curves disappeared and merged with HTO. This indicated that the existence of Alekseevsky clay promoted the FD process and made the fuel formation and its combustion a continuous reaction process. Also, the presence of Alekseevsky clay significantly shifted HTO peak temperature from about 541 ℃ into 506 ℃, which means that Alekseevsky clay significantly promoted fuel formation and combustion, thus improving the combustion efficiency of heavy oil. This implies that the presence of Alekseevsky clay will be favorable for the application of an in-situ combustion process in the oilfield.