State of the Art Review of the Steam Foam Process

Delamaide, Eric; Cuenca, Amandine; Chabert, Max

doi:10.2118/181160-ms

Cited by 25 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Salinity is an important factor to consider because of brine presence in porous media. Usually, anionic surfactants are strongly influenced by adsorption on rock surface due to the presence of salt and divalent cations [16]. However, adsorption caused by salinity strongly depends on surfactant molecular structure.…”

Section: Adsorption and Salinitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Study of mechanisms responsible for foaming-agent loss in porous media at high-temperature conditions

Pantoja

Vargas

Navarro

2020

Rev.Fac.Ing.Univ.Antioquia

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Steam-foam processes require the correct selection of a surfactant agent resistant to high temperatures, stable over time, and capable of producing mobility reduction of the steam. A state-of-the-art revision allows identifying the main phenomena that could cause surfactant loss in porous medium. These phenomena are phase partitioning, adsorption, and thermal degradation, where phase partitioning could cause higher loss. Additionally, adsorption and phase partitioning have a direct relationship with the surfactant concentration below its critical micellar concentration. Reservoir conditions such as temperature, salinity and presence of clay are parameters that influence surfactant solution behavior. High temperatures in porous medium could reduce tensoactive loss by adsorption due to exothermic reactions. However, the foaming agent could be partitioned into oleic phase owing to viscosity reduction and molecules motion improvement towards crude oil. High concentrations of salt could increase adsorption measurements, produce surfactant preference to oil or even precipitation. Surfactant solution should be formed by a mixture of components that provides stability during the steam injection process. Generally, the solution is composed mainly of an anionic surfactant. Some widely used surfactants are alkyl aryl sulfonates and alpha olefin sulfonates, suitable for steam procedures up to 300°C. Despite, non-ionic surfactants, and pH adjustment substance could be added to give foaming agent an improved performance.

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Section: Adsorption and Salinitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Study of mechanisms responsible for foaming-agent loss in porous media at high-temperature conditions

Pantoja

Vargas

Navarro

2020

Rev.Fac.Ing.Univ.Antioquia

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“…Foam has been demonstrated as an effective mobility control or conformance improvement agent for gas injection process in conventional oil reservoirs [11][12][13]. In a recent continuous gas injection field trial in a low permeability oil reservoir in Texas, foam has been proven to be effective in diverting the injected gas to sweep the previously poorly swept region of the reservoir [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conformance Control for Tight Oil Cyclic Gas Injection Using Foam

et al. 2022

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Cyclic gas injection has been proven to be an effective enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique for tight oil reservoirs. During such processes, we expect recovery mechanisms such as oil swelling, oil viscosity reduction, vaporization, and pressure support, which highly relies on the successful conformance control of the injected gas. In this work, we present the numerical simulation study of using foam for improving the conformance control of cyclic gas injection in tight oil reservoir. We focus on improving two categories of conformance control problems using foam, making the injection profile for single well more evenly distributed and mitigating the gas breakthrough to adjacent wells through the connected hydraulic fractures in a multiwell setting. The simulation results show that foam has shown major impact in improving the gas conformance control in both cases. Typical recovery factor improvements are estimated to be up to 1% for lean gas injection in this tight oil reservoir. In conclusion, we have demonstrated the great potential of using foam to improve the conformance in tight oil cyclic gas injection process.

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“…As a common plugging agent, the foam can selectively block high-permeability layers and high water saturation layers [6,7]. In steam injection development of heavy oil, the foam can prevent steam channeling, control steam overlay, and expand steam swept volume, which improves heat utilization efficiency and thermal development performance [8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. However, as a thermodynamically unstable system, its performance is influenced by temperature considerably.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relationship between Blocking Performance and Foam Texture in Porous Media

Wang

Chen

et al. 2019

Geofluids

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Foam is widely used as a selective blocking agent through mobility control in oil field development. Its flow behavior in porous media has been investigated sufficiently, but few studies were carried out to understand the change of foam texture in flow. In this work, sandpack and micromodel experiments were conducted simultaneously to analyze foam flow behavior from the perspective of foam texture. Based on the measured flowing pressure and the observed foam image, the correlation between blocking pressure and foam texture was quantitatively investigated. The blocking pressure has a strong correlation with average diameter (-0.906) and variation coefficient (-0.78) and has a positive correlation with the filling ratio (0.84). These indicate that the blocking performance of foam is influenced by its texture closely. But path analysis shows only that the average diameter and variation coefficient have a significant direct effect on blocking pressure (-0.624 and -0.404). These show that the blocking capacity of foam is mainly influenced by the size and uniformity of bubbles. Tiny, dense, and homogeneous foam has a stronger blocking capacity. This study provides a deep insight of foam flow in porous media.

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State of the Art Review of the Steam Foam Process

Cited by 25 publications

References 72 publications

Study of mechanisms responsible for foaming-agent loss in porous media at high-temperature conditions

Study of mechanisms responsible for foaming-agent loss in porous media at high-temperature conditions

Conformance Control for Tight Oil Cyclic Gas Injection Using Foam

Relationship between Blocking Performance and Foam Texture in Porous Media

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