Heat injection is essential for oil shale in-situ conversion technology. The downhole of the heat injection well reaches temperatures above 400 • C during the process of heat injection, and part of the high-temperature gas dissipates through the wellbore annulus. Consequently, in addition to causing energy loss, the dissipation causes thermal damage to the casing and wellhead. To avoid dissipation, components that are suitable for high-temperature environments should be sealed and used during heat injection while mining. Therefore, this study presents the design of a packer composed of elastic graphite rubber and a high-temperature-resistant material. The influence of numerous factors, such as downhole temperature, working load, and height of rubber, on the reliability of the packer was analyzed. Subsequently, the numerical simulation analysis of the packer reliability in insitu conversion mining under high temperature and pressure environments was performed. The results indicate that when the operating temperature is stable, the operating load has the most obvious influence on the sealing reliability of the packer, whereas the change in the height of the rubber has the least significant effect on the maximum contact stress between the casing and rubber. The change in the operating temperature has the least significant effect on the overall sealing performance of the packer. Moreover, the rise of the temperature will increase the sealing reliability of the packer, and on the contrary, the drop in the temperature will decrease it.
The hot exhaust gas generated by a downhole combustion heater directly heats the formation, which can avoid the heat loss caused by the injection of high-temperature fluid on the ground. However, if the temperature of the exhaust gas is too high, it may lead to the carbonization of organic matter in the formation, which is not conducive to oil production. This paper proposes the use of low-temperature catalytic combustion of a mixture of methane and air to produce a suitable exhaust gas temperature. The simulation studies the influence of different parameters on the catalytic combustion characteristics of methane and the influence of downhole high-pressure conditions. The results show that under high-pressure conditions, using a smaller concentration of methane (4%) for catalytic combustion can obtain a higher conversion efficiency (88.75%), and the exhaust temperature is 1097 K. It is found that the high-pressure conditions in the well can promote the catalytic combustion process of the heater, which proves the feasibility of the downhole combustion heater for in situ heating of unconventional oil and gas reservoirs.
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