Volatile oil recovery through air injection is apromising method for highly heterogeneous lowperme-ability reservoirs.Thermal effects due to oxidation reaction,vaporization/condensation and flue gas drive
are the most important mechanisms for light oil recovery by medium pressure air injection.Togather evidence for this claim,weper for medramped temperature experiments with consolidated cores filled
with hexadecane injecting either air or nitrogen at different injection rates at medium pressures.The
experiments show that oxygen is removed from the injected air through physical and chemical sorption
by the hydrocarbon at low temperatures.Most of the bonded oxygen is released later at higher temperatures and reacts to form carbon oxides.The amount of oil burned in the air injection process relative
to the amount of oil recovered increased from 2% at 10 bar to 18% at 30 bar,and again decreased to 5% at
45 bar and 3% at 70 bar.This trend was predicted theoretically in an earlier study of the medium temperature oxidation process.