Validação numérica de estimativas analíticas aplicadas à combustão em meios porosos

Abstract

There is a growing interest in using thermal methods for the recovery of medium and high viscosity oil. One of these methods is the in-situ combustion, which consists in release heat within the reservoir through combustion of the injected air. The heavier oil components are used as fuel for exothermic reactions and the generated heat reduces the oil viscosity, stimulating the flow towards the production well. In general, the mathematical models for this recovery method are complex. Therefore, the analytical solutions for such models are impossible, requiring numerical simulations. Several works present analytical and numerical studies of one-dimensional models for combustion in porous media. In previous works analytical estimates for one dimensional models were obtained. Here these estimates are slightly generalized by including the prevailing pressure. We propose a two-dimensional model for the in-situ combustion process in heterogeneous porous media, considering variable pressure. Numerical results are obtained using the finite element method for spatial discretization, Crank-Nicolson finite difference scheme for time discretization and Newton’s method for the arising nonlinear equations. Analytical estimates for combustion wave speed and combustion wave temperature are obtained using one-dimensional simplified model. These estimates are successfully validated in the general model through the simulation results. Another one-dimensional simplification of the general model is numerically simulated by two approaches: the first is similar to the one previously described; and the second one is written as a complementarity problem. The arising nonlinear complementarity problems are solved by the FDA-NCP algorithm. Both numerical approaches are compared to the analytical estimate for the thermal wave, showing good agreement.