Implementation of a CO2 Foam Pilot Study in the SACROC Field: Performance Evaluation

Sanders, Aaron W.; Jones, Rachel; Linroth, Mark; Nguyen, Quoc P.

doi:10.2118/160016-ms

Cited by 62 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Foam possesses enormous potential in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) (Farajzadeh, Andrianov, Bruining, & Zitha, ; Kovscek & Radke, ; Talebian, Tan, Sagir, & Muhammad, ; Turta & Singhal, ). Foam integrates the advantages of both gas and surfactant, which has been considered as one of the most efficient displacement fluids in EOR (Enick, Olsen, Ammer, & Schuller, ; Li, Le Bleu, Liu, Hirasaki, & Miller, ; Sanders et al, ; Tang et al, ). The successful application of foam in the field is determined by the foam behavior to a large extent.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comprehensive Comparison on Foam Behavior in the Presence of Light Oil and Heavy Oil

Pang

Wang

2018

J Surfact & Detergents

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Crude oil properties significantly affect foam behavior that is important to foam application in enhanced oil recovery. This study focused on the comparison on foam behavior in the presence of light oil and heavy oil. Foamability and foam stability, the bubble size, and the film thickness as well as the configuration of oil drops were fully investigated. Final results indicated that both the heavy oil and light oil increased the foamability of sodium dodecyl sulfate but decreased that of the amphoteric surfactant imidazoline. The positive effect of both light oil and heavy oil on foam stability was reconfirmed. However, heavy oil was more favorable to foam stability. The light oil may shorten the foam half‐life but prolong the foam drainage half‐life. The heavy oil was more effective in reducing the foam size and increasing the foam uniformity compared with light oil. According to the micrograph of foam, light oil was emulsified into quite small oil droplets, filling the plateau borders and lamellas. The heavy oil, in the form of far larger oil droplets, was mainly distributed in plateau borders only. The larger oil droplets resulted in the more stable foam, which was verified. Moreover, light oil (oil B) performed well in thickening the foam film, as did the heavy oil (oil A). But for the lightest oil (oil C), a thinning effect on the film was detected.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comprehensive Comparison on Foam Behavior in the Presence of Light Oil and Heavy Oil

Pang

Wang

2018

J Surfact & Detergents

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“…In Le et al (2008), experimental and field scale simulation results show this is the most promising injection scenario which gave highest oil recovery and injectivity. Field trials indicated a 30% sweep efficiency improvement (Sanders et al 2012). Supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO 2 ) with its easily attainable critical temperature and pressure (31.1°C and 7.38 MPa) can be viewed as an ideal chemical processing solvent because it is nontoxic, inexpensive, volatile, nonflammable, readily available in large quantities, and environmentally benign (Eastoe et al 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Either liquid or CO 2 phase could be used to delivery those novel surfactants. A field trial was carried out in west Texas using surfactant injection in the CO 2 phase to create a CO 2 -in-water emulsion or foam to improve vertical conformance and create in-depth mobility control (Sanders et al 2012). Results indicated a 30% CO 2 trapping improvement in situ.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding aqueous foam with novel CO2-soluble surfactants for controlling CO2 vertical sweep in sandstone reservoirs

Ren

Nguyen

2017

Pet. Sci.

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The ability of a novel nonionic CO 2 -soluble surfactant to propagate foam in porous media was compared with that of a conventional anionic surfactant (aqueous soluble only) through core floods with Berea sandstone cores. Both simultaneous and alternating injections have been tested. The novel foam outperforms the conventional one with respect to faster foam propagation and higher desaturation rate. Furthermore, the novel injection strategy, CO 2 continuous injection with dissolved CO 2 -soluble surfactant, has been tested in the laboratory. Strong foam presented without delay. It is the first time the measured surfactant properties have been used to model foam transport on a field scale to extend our findings with the presence of gravity segregation. Different injection strategies have been tested under both constant rate and pressure constraints. It was showed that novel foam outperforms the conventional one in every scenario with much higher sweep efficiency and injectivity as well as more even pressure redistribution. Also, for this novel foam, it is not necessary that constant pressure injection is better, which has been concluded in previous literature for conventional foam. Furthermore, the novel injection strategy, CO 2 continuous injection with dissolved CO 2 -soluble surfactant, gave the best performance, which could lower the injection and water treatment cost.

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“…While there have been several successful foam pilots (see e.g. (Blaker et al, 2002;Li et al, 2009;Mukherjee et al, 2014;Sanders et al, 2012;Yu et al, 2008), historically very few foam pilots in fractured reservoirs have been performed, and those few have largely been deemed unsuccessful (Enick et al, 2012;Smith, 1988). This has been attributed to the lack of foam generation mechanisms in fractures, namely snap-off, film division and leave-behind.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobility control during CO2 EOR in fractured carbonates using foam: Laboratory evaluation and numerical simulations

Fernø

Eide

Steinsbø

et al. 2015

Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

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Implementation of a CO2 Foam Pilot Study in the SACROC Field: Performance Evaluation

Cited by 62 publications

References 13 publications

A Comprehensive Comparison on Foam Behavior in the Presence of Light Oil and Heavy Oil

A Comprehensive Comparison on Foam Behavior in the Presence of Light Oil and Heavy Oil

Understanding aqueous foam with novel CO2-soluble surfactants for controlling CO2 vertical sweep in sandstone reservoirs

Mobility control during CO2 EOR in fractured carbonates using foam: Laboratory evaluation and numerical simulations

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