Air Injection for Enhanced Oil Recovery: <i>In
Situ</i> Monitoring the Low-Temperature Oxidation of Oil through
Thermogravimetry/Differential Scanning Calorimetry and Pressure Differential
Scanning Calorimetry
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Abstract
Low-temperature oxidation (LTO) of
oil plays an important role
in air-injection based oil recovery processes. Systematic investigations
on the regularities of LTO reactions, especially those decoupled with
the influences of mass transfer, were highly expected to improve field
application and even to develop new strategies for heavy oil recovery.
In this contribution, both thermogravimetry/differential scanning
calorimeter and pressure differential scanning calorimeter were employed
as microreactors to <i>in situ</i> monitoring the heat release
and mass loss performances of the LTO process under different oxygen
partial pressures. The total amount of heat resulted from LTO reactions
of oil was observed in a linear relationship with oxygen partial pressure.
A one-step reaction model was proposed to simulate the low-temperature
mass loss behavior. The kinetic parameters were calculated based on
the Arrhenius expression and the assumption of distributed activation
energy. These results indicated the feasibility of <i>in situ</i> generated heat during low-temperature oxidation by the promotion
of oxygen partial pressure and the contact between oil and oxygen
with little loss of deposited oil