Effects of compositional variations on CO<sub>2</sub>foam under miscible conditions

Kahrobaei, Siavash; Li, Kai; Vincent-Bonnieu, S.; Farajzadeh, R.

doi:10.1002/aic.15938

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The surfactant solution was prepared using demineralized water also containing 1 wt.% (~0.17 M) NaCl. The critical micelle concentration (CMC) of this surfactant in demineralized water with 1 wt.% NaCl was measured by Kahrobaei et al (2017) using the Du Noüy ring method and reported to be 0.008 wt.%. Therefore, the experiments presented in this paper are conducted at roughly 62 times the CMC.…”

Section: Materials and Chemicalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foam Generation by Capillary Snap-Off in Flow Across a Sharp Permeability Transition

Shah

Wolf

Pilus

et al. 2018

SPE Improved Oil Recovery Conference

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Foam reduces gas mobility and can improve sweep efficiency in an enhanced-oil-recovery process. Previous studies show that foam can be generated in porous media by exceeding a critical velocity or pressure gradient. Such pressure gradients are typically encountered only near a well and therefore, it is uncertain whether foam can propagate far from wells. Theoretical studies show that foam can be generated independent of pressure gradient during flow across an abrupt increase in permeability. In subsurface flow, such sharp permeability changes occur across different length scales. Laminations and cross-laminations, for example, are commonly found small-scale features, whereas unconformities, including layer boundaries and erosional surfaces, are field-scale features that are associated with sharp permeability contrasts across them. In this study, we validate theoretical predictions of foam generation through a variety of experimental evidence. We perform coreflood experiments involving simultaneous injection of gas and surfactant solution at field-like velocities into a model consolidated porous medium made of sintered glass. The core has a well-characterized, sharp permeability transition achieved by sintering glass of different grain sizes. Pressure gradient is measured across several sections of the core to identify foam-generation events and the subsequent propagation of foam. X-ray computerized tomography (CT) provides dynamic images of the coreflood in the form of phase saturations as they develop through the experiment. We investigate the effects of the magnitude of the permeability change and injected gas fractional flow on foam generation and mobilization.

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Section: Materials and Chemicalsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foam Generation by Capillary Snap-Off in Flow Across a Sharp Permeability Transition

Shah

Wolf

Pilus

et al. 2018

SPE Improved Oil Recovery Conference

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“…The observation in [40] that a decane-rich region could enhance foam viscosity is somehow contradictory to the common view that oil is detrimental to foam stability [10]. One possible reason is that the oil type used for testing foam stability is also important.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…There have been a couple of preliminary studies on this topic [40]. It was found out that both solvent-rich and decane-rich regions generated high apparent foam viscosity while the lowest foam strength was observed in-between in the solvent quality scan experiment [40]. This study could be helpful to develop a foam model that account for the effect of compositional variations on the foam mobility.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…As a result, the foam model should incorporate the effect of composition to identify if the relative permeability of the relevant fluids should be modified or not. There have been a couple of preliminary studies on this topic [40]. It was found out that both solvent-rich and decane-rich regions generated high apparent foam viscosity while the lowest foam strength was observed in-between in the solvent quality scan experiment [40].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Modeling Near-Miscible Gas Foam Injection in Fractured Tight Rocks and Its Challenges

Luo

Mohanty

2021

Energies

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Unlocking oil from tight reservoirs remains a challenging task, as the existence of fractures and oil-wet rock surfaces tends to make the recovery uneconomic. Injecting a gas in the form of a foam is considered a feasible technique in such reservoirs for providing conformance control and reducing gas-oil interfacial tension (IFT) that allows the injected fluids to enter the rock matrix. This paper presents a modeling strategy that aims to understand the behavior of near-miscible foam injection and to find the optimal strategy to oil recovery depending on the reservoir pressure and gas availability. Corefloods with foam injection following gas injection into a fractured rock were simulated and history matched using a compositional commercial simulator. The simulation results agreed with the experimental data with respect to both oil recovery and pressure gradient during both injection schedules. Additional simulations were carried out by increasing the foam strength and changing the injected gas composition. It was found that increasing foam strength or the proportion of ethane could boost oil production rate significantly. When injected gas gets miscible or near miscible, the foam model would face serious challenges, as gas and oil phases could not be distinguished by the simulator, while they have essentially different effects on the presence and strength of foam in terms of modeling. We provide in-depth thoughts and discussions on potential ways to improve current foam models to account for miscible and near-miscible conditions.

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“…Conventional nomenclature refers to surfactant stabilized super critical CO 2 dispersion in water (C/W) as emulsion. Yet, for simplicity, we do not differentiate the gaseous-CO 2 foam and CO 2in-water (C/W) emulsion [36] and only use the term CO 2 foam indicating that CO 2 is the internal phase. The rationale is that the fundamental principles of interfacial phenomena and transport properties as CO 2 foam transitions into CO 2 emulsion still hold the same.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exergy return on exergy investment analysis of natural-polymer (Guar-Arabic gum) enhanced oil recovery process

Hassan

Ayoub

Eissa

et al. 2019

Energy

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This paper probes the transport of CO 2 soluble surfactant for foaming in porous media. We numerically investigate the effect of surfactant partitioning between the aqueous phase and the gaseous phase on foam transport for subsurface applications when the surfactant is injected in the CO 2 phase. A 2-D reservoir simulation is developed to quantify the effect of surfactant partition coefficient on the displacement conformance and CO 2 sweep efficiency. A texture-implicit local-equilibrium foam model is embedded to describe how the partitioning of surfactant between water and CO 2 affects the CO 2 foam mobility control when surfactant is injected in the CO 2 phase. We conclude that when surfactant has approximately equal affinity to both the CO 2 and the water, the transport of surfactant is in line with the gas propagation and therefore the sweep efficiency is maximized. Too high affinity to water (small partition coefficient) results in surfactant retardation whereas too high affinity to CO 2 (large partition coefficient) leads to weak foam and insufficient mobility reduction. This work sheds light upon the design of water-alternating-gas-plus-surfactant-in-gas (WAG + S) process to improve the conventional foam process with surfactant-alternating-gas (SAG) injection mode during which significant amount of surfactant could possibly drain down by gravity before CO 2 slugs catch up to generate foam in situ the reservoir.

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Effects of compositional variations on CO₂foam under miscible conditions

Cited by 20 publications

References 45 publications

Foam Generation by Capillary Snap-Off in Flow Across a Sharp Permeability Transition

Foam Generation by Capillary Snap-Off in Flow Across a Sharp Permeability Transition

Modeling Near-Miscible Gas Foam Injection in Fractured Tight Rocks and Its Challenges

Exergy return on exergy investment analysis of natural-polymer (Guar-Arabic gum) enhanced oil recovery process

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Effects of compositional variations on CO2foam under miscible conditions

Cited by 20 publications

References 45 publications

Foam Generation by Capillary Snap-Off in Flow Across a Sharp Permeability Transition

Foam Generation by Capillary Snap-Off in Flow Across a Sharp Permeability Transition

Modeling Near-Miscible Gas Foam Injection in Fractured Tight Rocks and Its Challenges

Exergy return on exergy investment analysis of natural-polymer (Guar-Arabic gum) enhanced oil recovery process

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Product

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Effects of compositional variations on CO₂foam under miscible conditions