Modeling Techniques for Foam Flow in Porous Media

Abstract

Foam, a dispersion of gas in liquid, has been investigated as a tool for gas-mobility and conformance control in porous media for a variety of applications since the late 1950s. These applications include enhanced oil recovery, matrix-acidization treatments, gasleakage prevention, as well as contaminated-aquifer remediation. To understand the complex physics of foam in porous media and to implement foam processes in a more-controllable way, various foam-modeling techniques were developed in the past 3 decades.This paper reviews modeling approaches obtained from different publications for describing foam flow through porous media. Specifically, we tabulate models on the basis of their respective characteristics, including implicit-texture as well as mechanistic population-balance foam models. In various population-balance models, how foam texture is obtained and how gas mobility is altered as a function of foam texture, among other variables, are presented and compared. It is generally understood that both the gas relative permeability and viscosity vary in the reduction of gas mobility through foam generation in porous media. However, because the two parameters appear together in the Darcy equation, different approaches were taken to alter the mobility in the various models: only reduction of gas relative permeability, increasing of effective gas viscosity, or a combination of both. The applicability and limitations of each approach are discussed. How various foam-generation mechanisms play a role in the foam-generation function in mechanistic models is also discussed in this review, which is indispensable to reconcile the findings from different publications. In addition, other foam-modeling methods, such as the approaches that use fractional-flow theory and those that use percolation theory, are also reviewed in this work. Several challenges for foam modeling, including model selection and enhancement, fitting parameters to data, modeling oil effect on foam behavior, and scaling up of foam models, are also discussed at the end of this paper.

Chemical Additives and Foam to Enhance SAGD Performance

“…Local equilibrium models assume that foam lies in a local steady state. Ma et al (2015) concluded several local equilibrium models. Marfoe et al (1987) put forward a model which realized gas mobility reduction through gas viscosity alteration (Equation (2-13)).…”

Pressure-driven growth in strongly heterogeneous systems

“…The reasons why foam is a good candidate driving fluid for improved oil recovery stem from a number of properties of foam, particularly the properties it exhibits when present within porous media such as oil reservoirs [4,5]. Using foam as a driving fluid, rather than using injected gas alone, tends to prevent gas (within the foam) from simply rising to the top of the reservoir and "overriding" the oil present [6,7].…”

Establishment and application of a structure evolution model for aqueous foam based on fractal theory

“…A nonNewtonian uid model was used for the simulation of foam ow in oil pipes, and rheological parameters were obtained experimentally. 44 The simulation of foam ow in porous media can also be performed upon properly adapting the model to this system, but most methods for this task are based on a gasliquid two-phase ow model.…”