As an effective enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method in
the late
stage of the steam injection process, in situ combustion (ISC) has
been verified by more and more researchers owing to its high recovery
efficiency and low operation cost. However, the ISC process is prone
to bringing about an unfavorable result with a low sweep efficiency
and even an extinction process due to the complexity and uncertainty
in oil and water distribution as well as the heterogeneity of the
actual reservoir. In this work, combustion tube experiments combined
with numerical simulations by CMG-STARS were conducted to study the
influence of a reservoir′s physical parameters on the stability
of ISC. It was found that the sustainability of the combustion process
is sensitive to permeability and oil saturation, the lower limits
of which are determined as 0.2 μm2 and 0.2, respectively.
Then, a formula was preliminarily proposed as 0.25 ≤ So/K ≤
0.8, which could be used as a reference of screening criteria in designing
the ISC process.
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