In this research an ionic liquid base Nickel was used in a combustion tube with heavy oil from Gulf of Mexico. The underlying objective is to increase the mobility and quality of the oil inside the reservoir by effect of the ionic solution catalyst during the combustion.The catalyst, used in the experiments was previously mixed with heavy crude oil of 12.5 °API. The catalyst in liquid phase is based Nickel. This ionic catalyst is highly soluble and ultradispersed in heavy oil, and it was mixture with heavy crude oil with a concentration of 500 ppm wt.The porous media used in the combustion tube was a triturated dolomite carbonated rock with a 35.23% of porosity, and a particle size of 0.42 mm. This rock was used for two experiments at the same saturation conditions: heavy crude oil (23.79%), and water (25.26%).The results obtained shown the advantages of use of this catalyst in relationship of a conventional combustion as follows: (1) important viscosity reduction, (2) increment of oil production, 85% vs. 77.67%, (3) faster combustion front, (4) higher efficiency in the combustion, 75.86 vs. 197.28 ft3 air/ft3 hydrocarbons, (5) higher temperatures through the combustion process, around 600 o C, and (6) reduction of the contain of sulphur, resins and asphaltenes in the oil produced.Using this kind of Nickel ionic solution catalyst at low concentration would permit to increase the recovery factor, and upgrade the oil properties in-situ.

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The present paper deals with emulsion flooding laboratory experiments in porous media, which were performed to investigate the potential use of emulsions as IOR technologies in brownfields of the Gulf of Mexico. Until now, the method of chemical emulsion injections free of siloxanes or fluorinated compounds to promote the hydrophobization of sandstone rocks to reconfigure the phase flow paths, water and oil, generating changes in the flow patterns after the injection of water in order to improve and increase the oil recovery has not been described in the literature.Oil-in-water emulsions were used along with a sand pack and a sandstone core. The flooding tests were carried out with Ottawa sand and Berea sandstones, respectively. The diameter size of the 90 % dispersed phase (D 90 ), which was represented by a hydrophobic chemical compound, was lower than 5 m and characterized by laser diffraction; the continuous phase was water. Initially, the oil was displaced by water injection. At the end of this step, the oil production fell to zero; all the oil inside the pore space was immobile. An emulsion slug was then injected, followed by another cycle of water injection. During this process, the additional oil recovery was higher than 15 %.An oil-in-water emulsion based on a hydrophobic compound blocked a small, water-full pore and additionally, changed the pore surface wettability from water-wet to oil-wet, which modifies the preferential water routes, increasing the volumetric sweep, changing the residual oil saturation and finally, increasing the oil recovery factor.The results suggest the possibility of using this novel technology in IOR projects for mature oil fields that feature medium gravity (20°API) and produce high water cut. In addition, this technology is not affected by water salinity and temperature.

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