Experimental Study of Foam Generation, Sweep Efficiency and Flow in a Fracture Network

In this work, we report a novel class of a commercially available surfactant which shows a multistimuli-responsive behavior toward foam stability. It comprises three components-a hydrophobe (tristyrylphenol), a temperature-sensitive block (polypropylene oxide, PO), and a pH-sensitive moiety (carboxyl group). The hydrophobicity-hydrophilicity balance of the surfactant can be tuned by changing either the pH or temperature of the system. At or below pH 4, the carboxyl functional group is dominantly protonated, resulting in zero foamability. At higher pH, the surfactant exhibits good foamability and foam stability marked with a fine bubble texture (∼200 μm). Foam destabilization could be achieved rapidly by either lowering the pH or bubbling CO gas. At a fixed pH in the presence of salt, increasing the temperature to 65 °C resulted in rapid defoaming because of the increased hydrophobicity of the PO chain. This stimuli-induced stabilization and destabilization of foam were found to be reversible. We envisage the use of such a multi-responsive foaming system in diverse applications such as foam-enhanced oil recovery and environmental remediation where spatial and temporal control over foam stability is desirable. The low-cost commercial availability of the surfactant further makes it lucrative.

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Mixed CO₂/N₂ Foam for EOR as a Novel Solution for Supercritical CO₂ Foam Challenges in Sandstone Reservoirs

Abdelaal

Gajbhiye

Shehri

2020

ACS Omega

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Among the various enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes, CO 2 injection has been widely utilized for oil displacement in EOR. Unfortunately, gas injection suffers from gravity override and high mobility, which reduces the sweep efficiency and oil recovery. Foams can counter these problems by reducing gas mobility, which significantly increases the macroscopic sweep efficiency and results in higher recovery. Nevertheless, CO 2 is unable to generate foam or strong foam above its supercritical conditions (for CO 2 , 1100 psi at 31.1 °C), and most of the reservoirs exist at higher temperatures and pressure than CO 2 supercritical conditions. The formation of strong CO 2 foam becomes more difficult with an increase in pressure and temperature above its supercritical conditions and exacerbated CO 2 -foam properties. These difficulties can be overcome by replacing a portion of CO 2 with N 2 because a mixture of N 2 and CO 2 gases can generate foam or strong foam above CO 2 supercritical conditions. Although many researchers have investigated EOR by using CO 2 or N 2 foam separately, the performance of mixed CO 2 /N 2 foam on EOR has not been investigated. This study provides a solution to generate CO 2 foam above its supercritical conditions by replacing part of CO 2 with N 2 (mixed CO 2 /N 2 foam). The mixed foam not only generates strong foam above CO 2 supercritical conditions but also remarkably increases the oil recovery. This solution overcomes the difficulties associated with the formation of CO 2 foam at HPHT conditions enabling the use of the CO 2 -foam system for effective EOR and other applications of CO 2 foam such as conformance control.

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Experimental Study of Foam Generation, Sweep Efficiency and Flow in a Fracture Network

Cited by 6 publications

References 109 publications

Steps and Challenges in Empirical Foam Modeling for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Steps and Challenges in Empirical Foam Modeling for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Multistimuli-Responsive Foams Using an Anionic Surfactant

Mixed CO₂/N₂ Foam for EOR as a Novel Solution for Supercritical CO₂ Foam Challenges in Sandstone Reservoirs

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Experimental Study of Foam Generation, Sweep Efficiency and Flow in a Fracture Network

Cited by 6 publications

References 109 publications

Steps and Challenges in Empirical Foam Modeling for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Steps and Challenges in Empirical Foam Modeling for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Multistimuli-Responsive Foams Using an Anionic Surfactant

Mixed CO2/N2 Foam for EOR as a Novel Solution for Supercritical CO2 Foam Challenges in Sandstone Reservoirs

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Mixed CO₂/N₂ Foam for EOR as a Novel Solution for Supercritical CO₂ Foam Challenges in Sandstone Reservoirs