LAUSR

ABSTRACT In the models developed for oil in situ combustion so far, local thermal equilibrium (LTE) was assumed between reservoir rock and fluids without being validated. As presence of a combustion zone makes the validation of this assumption questionable, in this study a new two-energy equations model is developed describing the temperature fields of rock and fluids separately. Investigating the effect of local thermal nonequilibrium between rock and fluids indicates that LTE will fail if the grain's diameter size order exceeds a millimeter. In this case, using LTE will lead to overestimating the heat and mass transfer rates.