Prospects of supercritical hydrothermal combustion as recovery technology for heavy oil reservoirs

Heavy oil is one of the most abundant fossil fuel resources on the earth. The conventional surface steam-injection thermal recovery technique faces some problems such as high heat loss, environmental pollution, and limited reservoir depth. Downhole steam generator and multi-thermal fluid generator technologies provide solutions to the above-mentioned problems, but there are still areas that need further improvement. Supercritical hydrothermal combustion is an advanced combustion technology with several advantages, such as a high flame temperature, short reaction time, compact structure and flexible fuel, which lead to a large potential for application in the field of heavy oil recovery. This manuscript proposes and discusses a supercritical hydrothermal combustion multi-thermal fluid generator technology that can solve the problems in traditional heavy oil recovery technology. To verify the feasibility of the aforementioned technology, our team designed and developed a 0.3 t/h supercritical hydrothermal combustion multi-thermal fluid generator, and established a corresponding numerical calculation model.