How it’s done

DCT uniquely combines two patented new technologies, HF and GAGD, to eliminate the CO₂ emissions resulting from natural gas flaring in remote oil fields by burning it in the novel HF combustion system and utilizing the generated heat to treat the oil-field produced water. Thus-cooled flue gases (mostly N₂ and CO₂) are then injected, in a manner advocated by the novel GAGD process, into oilfields for enhancing oil recovery. HydroFlame is a novel combustion process for burning natural gas directly in a flowing stream of water. Since the flame and water are in direct contact, heat-transfer coefficients are increased by several orders of magnitude compared to conventional shell-and-tube heat exchangers, thereby eliminating the need for expensive metallic combustors. GAGD deviates from the current industry practice of horizontal displacement of gas-oil mixture in the reservoir to a vertical one.

The current industry practice (WAG and CGI technologies) is an effort to fight with natural forces of gravity while GAGD takes advantage of natural gravity segregation of fluids. This “working-with-nature” is what has yielded consistently high oil recoveries (65%-95%) in various pilot experiments compared to 5%- 10% recoveries using conventional practice in 59 field projects. The flue gas produced by HF process is injected in the vertical wells which then accumulates at the top of the payzone due to gravity segregation displacing oil and draining through horizontal producer located at the bottom. The gravity segregation also helps in eliminating gas breakthrough and preventing the gas phase from competing for flow with the oil resulting in higher oil production rates. Thus, this unique combination of HF and GAGD technologies, is expected to enable a long-awaited solution to the following:

Problem of historically low oil recoveries