Experimental Study on Mechanism of Foamy Oil-Assisted Methane Foam Flooding in an Etched Glass Micromodel

Abstract

A number of heavy oil reservoirs under cold heavy oil production with sand (CHOPS) show anomalously good primary performance due to foamy oil flow. However, as the pressure of the reservoir depletes, the foamy oil phenomenon gradually disappears and the development gradually deteriorates. In this paper, a new method named methane foam flooding is proposed as an effective enhanced heavy oil recovery process. In this paper, we take advantage of Ross miles foam equipments to select foaming agents and evaluate the foam ability, study and analyze the foam ability of different foam agent in different concentrations. and through visual microscopic model experiments to study the oil displacement mechanism and flow characteristics of methane foam flooding. The results show that foaming agent ZY-1 has excellent foam comprehensive properties, and it has the best foam stability at 1% concentration. It can be found from the micromodel flood experiments that methane foam flooding can effectively block the formation of high permeability channels, delaying the production of methane gas, emulsifying crude oil and changing the wettability of the rock to enlarge a sweeping volume and improve oil displacement efficiency.

Experimental Evaluation of Foam-Assisted Gas Injection in Proppant-Packed Fractured Oil-Wet Carbonate

“…In fact, numerous foam injection lab tests using Wolfcamp formations have been attempted using the produced gas, i.e., methane (CH 4 ), ethane (C 2 H 6 ), propane (C 3 H 8 ), or their mixtures . Their performance compared to those of CO 2 and N 2 gases has been very encouraging. ,,− However, thus far, only a few laboratory studies have been conducted at reservoir conditions using reservoir and/or whole core samples. , Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, only a single macro-scale methane-based foam study has been performed in a fractured oil-wet system at reservoir conditions . Therefore, detailed experimental investigations of hydrocarbon-based foam injection are necessary to elucidate the efficacy of this EOR scheme in improving fracture–matrix integrations under operating conditions mimicking those of real-world applications.…”