Abstract

Is ignition or extinction the fate of an in-situ combustion that occurs in a bounded region within an oil reservoir? It is well known that such combustion helps with the extraction of heavy oils. The process burns small amounts of crude oil and increasing recovery by lowering the density of the oil downstream. However, how to maintain such behavior within the reservoir is not fully understood. To overcome this problem, an unconventional approach comes from a simple reaction model that “moves” at constant speed, set by reservoir and injection temperatures. Reaction speed and temperature are found for any configuration; the proposed model can have more than one solution profile, a stability analysis of which reveals the behavior of those solutions. A practical conclusion is the challenge of maintaining the conditions for such profiles to exist with a rich combustion that is maintained for waves that expand in two or three dimensions.