Modeling and Simulation of In-Situ Combustion of Oil Shale as Enhanced Oil Recovery Technique in Porous Media

Abstract

Oil shale is fast becoming an important alternative energy source due to its huge reserves, with oil shale it is quite possible to satisfy future oil requirement. This study presents a one-dimensional transient coupled mass and heat transport model incorporating combustion front velocity, describing the in-situ combustion of oil shale in a porous medium. The coupled nonlinear partial differential equations describing the phenomenon were decoupled using perturbation method and solved analytically using eigenfunctions expansion technique and direct integration. The governing parameters of the problem are the Frank-Kamenetskii number (), Peclet energy number , Peclet mass number , Reynolds number , Darcy number and Heat exchange coefficient . the results obtained were presented graphically and discussed. These results show that the species concentrations (X and Y) and temperatures distribution in porous medium are significantly influenced by the Frank-Kamenetskii number, heat exchange coefficient, time and distance.