Potential of Copper-Based Oil Soluble Catalyst for Improving Efficiency of In-Situ Combustion Process: Catalytic Combustion, Catalytic In-Situ Oil Upgrading, and Increased Oil Recovery

Abstract

In-situ combustion (ISC) is a promising thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method for heavy oils. However, its field application is still limited due to difficulty in ignition, low combustion efficiency, unstable combustion front, etc. To improve the success rate of ISC process, we investigated the effectiveness of copper-based oil soluble catalyst for catalyzing combustion and in-situ upgrading of heavy oils. High-pressure differential scanning calorimetry (HP-DSC) and TGA were used to investigate the effect of catalyst on the thermochemistry (onset temperature, temperature range of reaction interval, heat effect, etc.) and kinetic parameters of combustion process. A Porous medium thermo-effect cell (PMTEC) was designed to study the catalytic combustion of heavy oil in porous media under air flow. And, a visual combustion tube (VCT) was developed to study the catalytic effect of catalyst on the ISC process, including improving combustion front propagation, in-situ upgrading of heavy oils, and oil recovery. HP-DSC results showed that copper-based oil soluble catalyst significantly shifted the low-temperature oxidation (LTO), transition stage (FD), and high-temperature oxidation (HTO) into lower temperature ranges. Especially for HTO, the end temperature was decreased about 120 °C. It was finished at a narrower temperature region with a higher heat flow, which implies that the combustion efficiency of HTO was greatly improved. TG-DTG data also showed the combustion reaction was transferred into lower temperatures. In addition, from TG-DTG and kinetic data, it can be concluded that the catalyst significantly reduced the activation energy in FD and HTO stage, which thus decreases the reaction barriers between FD and HTO and increases the continuity of reactions between FD and HTO. PEMTC experiments also showed that the ignition temperature of heavy oil combustion in porous media in airflow was decreased about 46 °C by copper-based catalyst. VCT experiments indicated that in the presence of copper-based oil soluble catalyst, combustion front propagate faster, oil recovery was 10% higher than without catalyst, and a deep in-situ oil upgrading was achieved with a significant viscosity reduction (9 times lower) and increase of saturates content (especially alkanes with lower carbon number C11-C17). All these results showed that copper-based oil soluble catalyst has a great potential in improving the efficiency of ISC process and in-situ oil upgrading. Its application can help to improve the success rate and wide application of ISC process for heavy oil recovery, which will promote the highly efficient development of heavy oil resources.

Oxidation of Heavy Oil Using Oil-Dispersed Transition Metal Acetylacetonate Catalysts for Enhanced Oil Recovery

“…It contained the following. The internal structures of the device were presented in our earlier works in more detail. ,,,, The heating program of the heater was as follows: RT was increased to 50 °C for 2 min and maintained for 10 min, and then, the heater started to work with a heating rate of 10 °C/min until the temperature of 700 °C. During the reactions, the airflow was equal to 0.5 L/min in the reactor.…”

“…In the FD district, these oxygenated products are further fully decomposed during pyrolysis to form deposited coke, which becomes a fuel, in the HTO district, for the self-sustaining combustion front and propagation process. In the HTO, the coke combustion process is considered as the key reaction that results in producing carbon dioxide, mainly. , Furthermore, the amount of fuel consumed in ISC is a small fraction of the reservoir oil. Therefore, this method has been labeled a low-cost heat delivering method for heavy and extra-heavy oil recovery. , Despite the noticeable advantages of the ISC technique, it still suffers from some theoretical and practical problems such as difficulty in the ignition, low combustion efficiency, and unstable combustion front that limit its application in oil production industries. , …”

“…These unpleasant aspects have limited the application of metal, metal oxide particles, and water-soluble metal salts in ISC technology, and the need for other effective species of precursors or catalysts with high distribution and solubility in heavy oil environments is still high and but their development is challenging . Using efficient oil-soluble and oil-dispersed catalysts based on transition metals due to their valence electronic state is a key methodology to improve the stability of the combustion front in the ISC process due to their high distribution in heavy crude oil environments. ,, A series of different metal-based catalysts were used in studies conducted by Bearden . This work covers many types of precursors including Ni-octoate, Co-resinate, Fe-naphthenate, Mo-resinate, V-resinate, and Cr-resinate, which were separately mixed with heavy oil.…”

Effect of Ligand Structure on the Kinetics of Heavy Oil Oxidation: Toward Biobased Oil-Soluble Catalytic Systems for Enhanced Oil Recovery

“…This stage is known as medium-temperature oxidation. Finally, the obtained fuel deposits (FDs) or in a large number of studies known as coke undergo oxidation at higher temperatures in the stage called the high-temperature oxidation (HTO) region. ,,− One of the main issues as per our knowledge of in situ combustion is a lack of a clear explanation of the early breakthrough of the combustion flame front after a short time of initiating the combustion, which majorly leads to the failure of most in situ combustion projects. Some preliminary works were carried out several years ago to study the real causes of combustion flame front instability using various catalysts such as transition metal (TM)-based compounds, metal oxides, water-soluble metals, oil-soluble metals, and minerals such as clay. − It is worthwhile noting that TMs and their oxides have received much attention for thermal EOR due to their high capacity for adsorption and activation of oxygen, as well as their contribution to the propagation steps to regenerate more free radicals during oxidation processes.…”

Detailed investigations of the influence of catalyst packing porosity on the performance of THAI-CAPRI process for in situ catalytic upgrading of heavy oil and bitumen

“…nitrogen, carbon dioxide, light hydrocarbons, polymers, surfactants, alkaline, etc.) injection, electrical resistive or inductive heating, in situ catalytic upgrading process, etc., are used to produce oil from the heavy oils, tar sand and bitumen reservoirs (Guo et al, 2016 ; Li et al, 2020 ; Mokrys and Butler, 1993 ; Shah et al, 2010 ; Yuan et al, 2019 ). Among the different techniques, thermal processes for heavy oils and bitumen upgrading and recovery have been shown to exhibit higher recovery factors both at laboratory and during field trials, and even at commercial scale (Guo et al, 2016 ; Shah et al, 2010 ).…”