Experimental investigation on stable displacement mechanism and oil recovery enhancement of oxygen-reduced air assisted gravity drainage

The effects of gravity, capillary force, and viscous force on the migration characteristics of oil and gas interface in oxygen-reduced air-assisted gravity drainage (OAGD) were studied through a two-dimensional visualization model. The effects of bond number, capillary number and low-temperature oxidation on OAGD recovery were studied by long core displacement experiments. On this basis, the low-temperature oxidation number was introduced and its relationship with the OAGD recovery was established. The results show that the shape and changing law of oil and gas front are mainly influenced by gravity, capillary force and viscous force. When the bond number is constant (4.52×10−4), the shape of oil-gas front is controlled by capillary number. When the capillary number is less than 1.68×10−3, the oil and gas interface is stable. When the capillary number is greater than 2.69×10−2, the oil and gas interface shows viscous fingering. When the capillary number is between 1.68×10−3 and 2.69×10−2, the oil and gas interface becomes capillary fingering. The core flooding experiments results show that for OAGD stable flooding, before the gas breakthrough, higher recovery is obtained in higher gravity number and lower capillary number. In this stage, gravity is predominant in controlling OAGD recovery and the oil recovery could be improved by reducing injection velocity. After gas breakthrough, higher recovery was obtained in lower gravity and higher capillary numbers, which means that the viscous force had a significant influence on the recovery. Increasing gas injection velocity in this stage is an effective measure to improve oil recovery. The low-temperature oxidation number has a good correlation with the recovery and can be used to predict the OAGD recovery.