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Introduction
In general, this reaction has oxygen chemically binding with the
This paper has been written in response to questions which hydrocarbon molecules to produce oxygenated species such as al-
many reservoir engineers express when evaluating the feasibility dehydes, alcohols, ketones and hydroperoxides. These compounds
of air injection as an enhanced oil recovery process for their fields. tend to further react and polymerize with each other forming
Questions such as, “What laboratory tests are available? What type heavier, less desirable compounds such as asphaltenes and, even-
of data is provided by each test? How do we use the lab results
tually, coke. On the other hand, bond scission reactions are of the
to predict field performance?” are not uncommon, and, although
form:
there are not straightforward answers, a discussion on the useful-
ness of different lab tests is presented to clarify some of the related
concepts. Hydrocarbon + O2 → Carbon oxides + Water + Energy
This document has also been written in response to the concerns
and comments expressed by many reservoir simulation practitio-
Bond scission reactions represent the traditional combustion re-
ners when matching combustion tube tests and other supporting
actions and involve the destructive oxidation of the hydrocarbon to
oxidation experiments, and trying to predict field performance of
an air injection project based on kinetic parameters obtained from produce carbon oxides (i.e. carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide)
such tests. Questions such as, “How do we use the lab data in the and water.
reservoir simulator? What are the limitations of thermal reservoir Figure 1 shows a schematic of the oxygen uptake rate plotted
simulation when predicting field performance of air injection proj- against temperature, showing the temperature range over which
ects?” are addressed to provide additional feedback and promote each oxidation mode is dominant (i.e. both reaction types occur si-
further discussion. multaneously but one type dominates the other) for ‘typical’ light
Additionally, this manuscript describes some of the combus- and heavy oils. It can be seen from this figure that, for heavy oils,
tion behaviours which have been observed by the In Situ Combus- oxygen addition reactions are dominant at temperatures below
tion Research Group (ISCRG) at the University of Calgary while 300ºC and bond scission reactions become the dominant reac-
performing combustion tube tests and supporting cracking/oxida- tion mechanism at temperatures above 350ºC. In between these
tion experiments, and gives some recommendations to improve two ranges there is the region known as the negative temperature
the modelling of the combustion process using thermal reservoir gradient region where the rate of reaction actually decreases with
simulators. increasing temperature. For light oils, bond scission reactions are
Hopefully, this paper will help the conventional reservoir en- normally the preferred reaction path at most temperature levels,
gineer to understand the differences associated with the less than and oxygen addition reactions only seem to dominate at tempera-
conventional ‘combustion reservoir engineering’ and the inherent tures below 150ºC.
challenges when trying to predict field performance of an air injec-
tion project based on experimental data and numerical reservoir
simulations.