This study presents the prospects of a novel insitu heat generation method by injecting thermochemical fluids (TCF) for improved bitumen production. Bitumen or tar is an extra-heavy oil with ultra-high viscosity. It is well established that thermal methods, including steam and solvent injections are efficient for decreasing viscosity and enhancing production of bitumen. However, these methods have several challenges ranging between high cost of steam generation, heat loss, solvent loss, and environmental issues such as emission of GHG. Injection of thermochemical fluids, which react under exothermic conditions to generate heat and pressure downhole, is a novel and efficient alternative to the afore-mentioned methods. It has lower cost of operation, less labor intensive and efficient thermal deliverability, since no steam facilities or plants are required and no toxic emission of GHG (greenhouse gas). In this research, we adopted both experimental and numerical simulation studies. The reaction of TCF was studied at different temperatures and pH. The kinetic and energetic analyses were performed. The information obtained was employed in designing core-flooding experiments for recovery of bitumen from saturated core samples with consideration for pH of the TCF. The percentage removal of bitumen using the TCF was compared with those of water-soluble and oil-soluble solvents and those of brine, hot water and steam injections. Subsequently, numerical modeling and simulation were performed to study the prospects of field scale application of the technology. The key findings includes dependence of the reaction rate on temperature, pH and molarity. The TCF treatments of bitumen led to creation cavity in the bitumen matrix with deposited NaCl confirmed with SEM-EDS. Understanding of TCF-bitumen interface using the molecular dynamics simulations established that the TCF reaction induces a homogeneous texture of the bitumen matrix via disturbing the large aggregates of the heavy bitumen components such asphaltene, and resin. The thermochemical fluid injection gave performance with significantly higher percentage removal than those of water and steam injection and was closely compared with those of solvent injection. Moreover, with reference to the conventional steam injection, the proposed method yielded higher production performance.

A novel insitu heat generation chemicals for improved bitumen production

ACS Fall 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.