Modeling Gas Trapping and Mobility in Foam EOR

Balan, Huseyin Onur; Balhoff, Matthew T.; Nguyen, Quoc P.; Rossen, W.R.

doi:10.3997/2214-4609.201404769

Cited by 2 publications

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“…For example, adding lauryl betaine to a blend of 4:1 Neodol 67-7PO sulfate and C15-18 internal olefin sulfonate can greatly enhance foam stability in the presence of oil (Li et al 2012). It was found that betaine increased the critical capillary pressure (corresponding to the local maximum disjoining pressure) through a pseudoemulsion film between oil and air (Basheva et al 1999;Farajzadeh et al 2012). Nevertheless, a more-comprehensive understanding of foam oil interactions is needed with various surfactant structures and oil types.…”

Section: Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Techniques for Foam Flow in Porous Media

et al. 2015

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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.

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Section: Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Techniques for Foam Flow in Porous Media

et al. 2015

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Modeling of Foamed Gas Mobility in Permeable Porous Media

2012

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In mechanistic modeling of foam in porous media, reduced gas mobility is attributed to viscous resistance of flowing foam lamellas to gas flow, while gas trapping significantly modifies relative permeability. By using pore-network models representative of real porous media, we previously developed a relationship between flowing gas fraction and pressure gradient for strong foam (high lamella density). In this study, we expand our model to describe the effects of foam strength and pore-scale apparent gas viscosity models on both relative gas permeability and effective gas viscosity. Dimensional analysis in scaling of these two rheological quantities with pressure gradient and lamella density is discussed. One of our important findings is that relative gas permeability is poorly sensitive to total lamella density while it is a strong non-linear function of flowing gas fraction, opposing to most of the existing theoretical models describing the effect of gas trapping on relative gas permeability. This is consistently observed for all the pore-scale apparent gas viscosity models. It is also found that effective gas viscosity increases exponentially with flowing lamella density. This result implies that the use of the commonly used apparent gas viscosity model for straight capillary tubes is not accurate for foam flow in porous media. In addition, shear thinning foam flow is more obvious at high flowing lamella density while Newtonian flow becomes significant at relatively low flowing lamella density. Furthermore, scaling of effective gas viscosity with flowing lamella density depends on how the later quantity is defined. Both empirical and mechanistic pore-scale apparent gas viscosity models give almost the same functional relationship between flowing gas fraction and pressure gradient. This would facilitate scaling of flow rate with pressure gradient and testing a range of shear-thinning and yield-stress behavior in a simple format. Our results necessitate the need for further improving the existing mechanistic foam modeling methods with focus on process upscaling.

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Modeling Gas Trapping and Mobility in Foam EOR

Cited by 2 publications

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Modeling Techniques for Foam Flow in Porous Media

Modeling Techniques for Foam Flow in Porous Media

Modeling of Foamed Gas Mobility in Permeable Porous Media

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