Catalytic in-situ combustion process in the presence of metal oxide particles

Abstract

© 2019, International Multidisciplinary Scientific Geoconference. All rights reserved. In today’s world, with high demanding of energy, heavy oil and bitumen are important hydrocarbon resources that play progressively significant roles in the worldwide economy. Due to the diminishing of conventional oil resources, getting energy from unconventional resources becomes a tremendously outstanding process. Recently, metal oxide catalysts have shown promising applications and effects in different thermal enhanced oil recovery processes. These metal oxide catalysts have been chosen due to their exclusive properties, such as high degree of dispersion in porous media and high catalytic activity. This study is aimed at developing a catalytic in-situ combustion process using metal oxide as catalysts for heavy crude oil recovery. For this purpose, we synthesized significant core-shell metal oxide (Al2O3@Fe3O4) used as catalysts in in-situ combustion process. We suspended the dispersible catalyst in crude oil. Then, high-pressure differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were conducted at air atmosphere to study the catalytic effect of the core-shell metal oxide on oil oxidation process of crude oil. Differential scanning calorimetry experiments confirmed that this type of core-shell nanoparticles can improve the oxidation performance during the oxidation of heavy crude oil. Both LTO and HTO intervals were shifted to lower temperatures. Also, the present work provides an easy method for synthesizing the metal oxide nanoparticles catalysts for catalyzing crude oil oxidation in ISC enhanced oil recovery process.