Feasibility and Efficiency of Dry and Wet In-Situ Combustion in Low-Viscosity Oil Reservoirs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract In-situ combustion (ISC) is a complex thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method traditionally applied to heavy and extra-heavy oil reservoirs. Its application to low-viscosity oil reservoirs presents challenges due to the higher ignition temperature requirements, resulting from the stable molecular content of such oils, and the lack of heavy fractions, such as asphaltenes and resins, which serve as fuel for sustaining combustion fronts. This study investigates low-viscosity oil combustion mechanisms and examines the interactions between reservoir rock, brine, and crude oil in sustaining combustion fronts during dry and wet ISC processes. The experiments utilized a 1-meter-long insulated stainless steel combustion tube packed with a mixture of reservoir rock, formation brine, and low-viscosity crude oil at a 1:1 liquid pore volume ratio. Combustion was initiated by injecting compressed air into the preheated tube. Dry ISC experiments involved air injection alone, while wet ISC co-injected air with distilled water at specific water-to-air ratios (WAR). The tested reservoir rocks included quartz-rich Canadian sand (Sample 1), U.S. reservoir rock 1 (Sample 2), and U.S. reservoir rock 2 (Sample 3). Post-experiment analyses were performed using Scanning Electron Microscopy with Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (SEM-EDS) to evaluate elemental composition and mineral transformations. The water produced was analyzed for pH and Total Dissolved Solids (TDS). Results emphasize the crucial role of reservoir rock reactivity and brine ionic strength in sustaining combustion fronts in low-viscosity oil reservoirs. Dry ISC led to less stable fronts, with peak temperatures ranging from 550 to 600°C, whereas wet ISC exhibited superior performance, achieving stable combustion fronts, higher combustion velocities, and lower peak temperatures. Produced water analyses indicated a salinity reduction from 120,000 ppm to as low as 30 ppm, supporting its feasibility for re-injection. Additionally, wet ISC resulted in cleaner reservoir rocks with minimal carbon residues, underscoring its advantages in efficiency, stability, and operational feasibility over dry ISC for low-viscosity oil recovery. This study provides a novel approach to ISC in low-viscosity oil reservoirs, demonstrating that despite the high ignition temperature requirement, reservoir rock and brine interactions play a key role in sustaining combustion. Unlike conventional ISC studies that focus on heavy oil, this research highlights how wet ISC can significantly enhance combustion stability and efficiency in low-viscosity oils, where conventional fuel sources (asphaltenes and resins) are insufficient. Furthermore, the study introduces the re-injection of treated produced water as a sustainable method to improve ISC efficiency, minimize environmental impact, and reduce operational costs. These findings offer new insights into optimizing ISC for low-viscosity oil reservoirs, making it a more viable and eco-friendly thermal EOR technique.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".