Effect of Oil Presence on CO₂ Foam Based Mobility Control in High Temperature High Salinity Carbonate Reservoirs

Abstract

Foam is one of the most cost-effective means of solving the drawbacks associated with the process of gas injection. The presented work is focused on probing the impact of oil saturation on CO2 foam generation and its stability in the presence of high temperature and high salinity conditions. In this work, initially a texture-implicit local equilibrium model is used for parametric matching of a core flooding experiment conducted in the absence of oil. Once the foam parameters are calculated and tuned, the designed model is later up-scaled and studied with the inclusion of oil. The key objective is to study the effect of miscibility on the foam displacement front and the degenerating effect instilled by the residual oil saturation on the stability of foam. Different field scale models are designed and compared to validate the observed effect and hypothesis. The results of this work suggests that during CO2 foam flooding the oil saturation has a profound effect on oil recovery especially when CO2 is in an immiscible state with oil when compared with the miscible state.

Evaluating the Transport Behavior of CO2 Foam in the Presence of Crude Oil under High-Temperature and High-Salinity Conditions for Carbonate Reservoirs

“…CO 2 foam − can increase the apparent viscosity of CO 2 by decreasing the relative permeability of CO 2 gas in porous media. Thus, the mobility of CO 2 can be decreased, making CO 2 foam a promising technique for enhancing the oil recovery of miscible CO 2 flooding process.…”

Study of the Enhanced Oil Recovery Mechanism and Remaining Oil State of Heavy Oil after Viscosity-Reducer-Assisted CO2 Foam Flooding: 2D Microvisualization Experimental Case

“…On the other hand, injection of CO 2 can effectively reduce greenhouse gas, , which is conducive to CCUS (carbon capture, utilization, and storage). − Therefore, CO 2 foam is more capable of pushing the foam to enter a deeper reservoir than N 2 foam in the heterogeneous reservoir . Like the application of N 2 foam in the heavy reservoir, the surfactant solution , also has be added into the CO 2 foam to improve the foam performance, and nonionic surfactants , are used to enhance the foam stabilization in the high-temperature and extremely high-salinity heavy oil reservoir. , In addition, Li et al improved the thermal stability of CO 2 foam under reservoir conditions; four different types of surfactants were evaluated by high-temperature- and high-pressure-foaming devices . Ardakani et al investigated the fundamental understanding of phase displacements involved in polymer-enhanced air foam; to do this, they performed a series of foam injection experiments on heterogeneous rock-look-alike micromodels .…”