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Large fractions of heavy oil reserves remain in shallow reservoirs, consisting of relatively thin sands separated by nearly impermeable shales. A potential recovery method for heavy oil is in-situ combustion. Compared to other methods, in situ combustion involves the added complexity of exothermic chemical reactions and temperature-dependent kinetics. Previous theoretical work by the authors have focused on the process in a single layer [7]. In this report we try to extend the approach to heterogeneous systems, by considering the simpler case of in-situ combustion in layered porous media (and particularly to a two-layer model). Analytical models are developed to delineate the combined effects of fluid flow, reaction and heat transfer on the dynamics of combustion fronts in layered porous media, using as parameters the thermal coupling between the layers, the heat transfer to the surroundings and the permeability contrast. We find that in layered systems, the thermal coupling between layers leads to coherent traveling fronts, propagating at the same velocity. This coupling retards greatly fronts in the more permeable layers and accelerates only slightly those in the less permeable ones, until a common front velocity is attained. As in the single-layer case, there exists a unique solution, under adiabatic conditions, and multiple steady-state solutions, under non-adiabatic conditions. The latter lead to ignition and extinction conditions. We show that the layer thickness and the permeability contrast between the layers play a crucial role. Importantly, for a sufficiently large permeability contrast, relatively small layer thickness and under non-adiabatic conditions, steady-state propagation in the two layers cannot be sustained, and the process becomes extinct, even though, under the same conditions, sustained propagation would have been predicted for the equivalent single-layer problem with the average injection velocity. Simple constraints are derived to delineate this case. The analysis is useful for the understanding of the viability of in situ combustion in heterogeneous porous media.

The Effect of Heterogeneity on In-Situ Combustion: Propagation of Combustion Fronts in Layered Porous Media