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Surfactant Stabilized Foams
in Porous Media
L.L.Schramm
S.M.Kutay
Foamed gels
used as selective barrier
Introduction
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR):
techniques for increasing the amount of oil
that can be extracted from an oil field.
Using EOR, 30-60 %, or more, of the
reservoir's original oil can be extracted
compared with 20-40% using primary and
secondary recovery.
The "secondary recovery" is the process in
which a second immiscible fluid (usually
water) is injected in the medium, pushing
out the oil from a porous medium
Introduction
Foams for Enhanced Oil Recovery
Gases such as steam, carbon dioxide
(CO2) and hydrocarbon gases are injected
into oil reservoirs to increase the recovery
of oil.
These gases are much less dense and
less viscous than the oil they attempt to
displace, so they tend to finger through or
migrate to the top of the reservoir, leaving
most of the oil behind.
Foams can help these gases to sweep oil
reservoirs more efficiently.
Introduction
Foams for EOR:
- mobility control foams / gas-injection-well
treatments
- gas-blocking foams for oil-production-
well treatments.
When foams are used for mobility control,
the most important parameter is the
viscous performance of the foam, while in
the case of gas-blocking foams, the
fundamental issue is their capability to
divert unwanted fluids (Schramm 1994).
In these applications, the foam is usually prepared in
situ by coinjection of gas and surfactant solution. As
the mixture of gas and surfactant solution flows
through the porous rock, rapid shear strain occurs and
leads quite naturally to the generation and stretching
of bubbles within the pores.
The texture of the foam (that is, the size of the
bubbles) depends mainly on the size of the pores.
Similarly, the number of bubbles that exist will be
determined by the balance between the rate of
generation of lamellae and the rate of decay.
The rate of generation depends on pore sizes and
porous-media complexities, and it should be roughly
proportional to the flow rate. The rate of decay is the
result of several simultaneous processes such as
lamellae rupture and coalescence that cause bubbles
breakdown
Foams are structured, two-phase fluids that
are compressible in nature
The bulk liquid is at the bottom of the foam
structure, and the gas phase is at the upper
side.
The gas phase is separated from the thin liquid
film by a 2D interface, or lamella, which is
defined as the region that encompasses the
thin film, the two interfaces on either side of
the thin film, and part of the junction to other
lamellae. The connection of three lamellae, at
an angle of 120, is referred to as the plateau
border
A porous medium or a porous material is a solid (often
called frame or matrix) permeated by an interconnected
network of pores (voids) filled with a fluid (liquid or gas). Usually
both the solid matrix and the pore network (also known as the
pore space) are assumed to be continuous, so as to form two
interpenetrating continua such as in a sponge. Many natural
substances such as rocks, soils, biological tissues (e.g. bones),
and man made materials such as cements, foams and
ceramics can be considered as porous media.
A poroelastic medium is characterised by its porosity,
permeability as well as the properties of its constituents (solid
matrix and fluid).
The concept of porous media is used in many areas of applied
science and engineering: mechanics (acoustics, geomechanics,
soil mechanics, rock mechanics), engineering (petroleu
engineering, construction engineering), geosciences
(hydrogeology, petroleum geology, geophysics), biology and
biophysics, material science, etc.
Gas mobility in the presence of foam depends
critically on foam-bubble size; bubble size may
vary with permeability, porosity, surfactant type
and concentration, and the velocity of liquid and
gas. This paper adopts a local equilibrium,
scaling perspective to describe quantitatively
foamed-gas mobility within heterogeneous
porous media.
porosity plays an important role in setting gas
mobility because it reflects the relative
abundance of foam germination and termination
sites per unit volume of porous media. Liquid
velocity is also important because gas mobility is
inversely proportional to this factor
Other techniques include thermal recovery
(which uses heat to improve flow rates),
and, more rarely, chemical injection, where
polymers are injected to increase the
effectiveness of waterfloods, or the use of
detergent-like surfactants to help lower the
surface tension that often prevents oil
droplets from moving through a reservoir.
Foam as drive fluid for enhanced oil
recovery (EOR)has shown promise,
particularly in steamflooding field
applications.
Some situations with uncontrolled flow of gas are
illustrated in Figure 1a:
Poor area sweep is illustrated in the upper layer
gas channels through a high permeability streak is
illustrated in the middle
gravity segregation is shown in the lower layer.
By injection of surfactant solution together with the
gas, the pore network can be filled with foam films that
span the pore cross section, and impede gas flow.
Then, gas is forced to flow into unswept parts of
thereservoir (Figure 1b).
Foam may also be employed in production wells that
produces too much gas. A foam plug in the gas
producing zone may reduce adverse effects of
highpermeability streaks, gas override, fingering,
channelling and coning.
Oil foam interactions
Foam will inevitably come into contact with
oil, and the stability of foam in the
presence of oil is therefore an important
issue.
Different oils influence foams differently,
and it is important for the selection of
chemicals for a given field treatment to
understand the principles that determine
the effect of foam/oil interactions.
Oil has a major destabilizing effect on foam.
It is important to understand:
How oil destabilizes foam
What surfactant properties lead to
increased stability against oil.
Oil-tolerant foam can be produced by making
the oil surface "water wet".
Foam must remain stable against oil, that is
remain as a dispersion of gas in liquid, for EOR
applications.
When flowing foam in porous media coalesces
into its two separate phases, liquid and gas, it no
longer provides a large flow resistance and is
ineffective for oil recovery
Left: the aqueous phase is able to spread
over the oil, forming a stable film of water
between oil and gas, a so-called
pseudoemulsion film. Then oil droplets in
the pore system will appear to the film as a
part of the rock, and foam oil tolerance is
ensured.
Right: in contrast, water does not wet the
oil, unstable pseudoemulsion films,
capillary forces will minimise the oil-water
contact area, and film rupture is then likely
to occur when films encounter oil drops.
Experimental
Materials:
Dow XSS 84321.05 (Dow Chemical Co.)
- an anionic hydrocarbon surfactant
- 1:1 mixture of Dowfax 3B2 (C10
diphenyletherdisulfonate) adn Canada
Stirling AOS (C14-16 alpha olefin
sulfonates)
Rewoteric AM U Varion CAS (Witco Co.)
- an amphoteric surfactant
- alkylamido sulfobetaine
Degassed 2.1% w/w TDS (total disolved
solid) brine solution
- density 1.015 g/cm, viscocity
0.997.mPas at 23C
- filtered through 0.45 m filter under 10 psi
pressure prior to use
Table 2 = the composition of Beaverhill
Lake reservoir brine in Western Canadian
Basin
Nitrogen Gas, minimum purity 99.5%
Procedure
Foam in Porous Media:
The differential pressure generated across the length
of the core sample is measured and the apparent
viscosity is calculated using a modified version of
Darcys Law:
: viscocity
foam generator
core
= PR4
8L1Q
pipeline