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THE DYNAMIC STABILITY OF FOAM IN THE PRESENCE OF OIL IN POROUS MEDIA

Chengdong Yuan, Wanfen Pu, M.A. Varfolomeev

Abstract

Foam flooding is a promising enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method for water-flooded reservoir due to its good mobility control capability. When foam is injected into oil reservoirs, it will contact with oil, and oil will affect the performance of foam. Therefore, the effect of oil on the properties of foam has always been a key research topic for foaming flooding, but it is also a very controversial subject. Many researchers reported that the presence of oil is detrimental for foam stability, but some others believed that stable foam still could be formed in oil environment if proper foam solution is employed. This work is attempted to investigate whether the stable foam could be generated in oil environment at dynamic flow condition in porous media. In this study, the generation and stability of foam in the presence and absence of oil were investigated by microscopic flow experiments. It turned out that the stable foam could be generated in oil environment during flooding process, and the foam size was even smaller compared with that without oil, which means the foam stability was improved due to the existence of oil. Simultaneously, it was also observed that the presence of foam relieved viscous fingering phenomenon (injected water breakthrough from the relative high permeability), and the foam drove oils to move forward more evenly. This indicated that foam had a good mobility control ability and thus effectively improved the swept volume. This study verified that stable foam could be generated during dynamic flooding process in porous media and made the well-known EOR mechanism of foam flooding (reducing mobility ratio and improving swept volume) visualized.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2017h/15/s06.063

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