Foam–oil interaction in porous media: Implications for foam assisted enhanced oil recovery

Foam stability in the presence and absence of hydrocarbons: From bubble- to bulk-scale

“…One of the major challenges to the success of foam in EOR is the adverse influence of oil on foam stability and also characterisation of the complex interaction between foam and oil [14,22]. Results from bulk foam experiments in the literature show an apparent contradiction of the effect of oil on foam stability.…”

“…The suitability of foam for EOR is due to its ability to reduce gas relative permeability by trapping gas bubbles in porous media [12]. The presence of bubbles increases the gas effective viscosity, which provides stability in the displacement process [13][14][15][16][17]. Foam also improves sweep by reducing gas mobility in high permeability areas thereby allowing diverted gas to sweep hydrocarbons in low permeability areas [12].…”

“…The destabilizing effects of oil on foam are believed to be a result of direct surface interactions between oil and foam which are determined by various physiochemical properties [14]. It is widely accepted that these interactions are governed by three main mechanisms; entry of oil droplet into gas-liquid interface [32,33], spreading of oil on the gas-liquid interface [34], and formation of an unstable bridge across lamella [35].…”

Application of foam floods for enhancing heavy oil recovery through stability analysis and core flood experiments

“…Stability of foam in the presence of oil has been extensively reported in the literature. [29][30][31][32] Experimental data from bulk and porous media tests show different results of foam stability in the presence of oil phase. Some researchers report that the foam stability decreases in the presence of oil phase.…”

Foam Drainage Control Using Thermocapillary Stress in a Two-Dimensional Microchamber

“…The development of controlled materials containing gas inclusions covers a large variety of applications such as scaffolds for tissue engineering [1,2], enhanced oil recovery [3,4], optics [5,6] and phononic crystals [7] to cite a few. Microfluidics gives access to structures unachievable at the macroscopic scale [8,9] and recent studies show that a major difficulty in manufacturing such discrete materials is to control the foam stabilization [10][11][12], or destabilization [13,14] over time, involving three phenomena : i) drainage due to gravity, ii) diffusion of gas through the liquid films, and iii) coalescence of neighboring bubbles [15].…”