Speaker
Description
Abstract
Foam-injection has been a highly effective Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) method for decades (Rossen, 1996; Lake et al., 2014). In addition to its applications in conventional oil and gas industry, injecting foam in porous media also greatly benefits various environmental applications such as soil remediation, ground water cleaning, and CO2 sequestration (Rossen et al., 2022) etc. Success of foam injection project usually requires generation and deep penetration of foam into the formation layers. Theories of foam generation and propagation (Rossen and Gauglitz, 1990; Gauglitz et al., 2002; Ashoori et al., 2011; 2012) demonstrate two important properties of foam: 1) foam generation, propagation and collapse require achieving a critical superficial velocity; 2) the efficiency of foam propagation decays rapidly with decreasing superficial velocity. The experiments of Yu et al. (2019; 2020) verify the critical superficial velocities predicted by theories (Rossen and Gauglitz, 1990; Ashoori et al., 2012) and reveal the significant effects of surfactant concentration and foam quality on foam properties. Their results (Yu et al., 2020) also imply that there is a trade-off between injecting foam at high and low foam qualities (and surfactant concentrations). The intricate balance between surfactant concentration and foam quality is critical for the efficiency and safety of foam injection.
The goal of this study is to investigate the effects of foam injection condition, aka. surfactant concentration and foam quality, on the efficiency of foam propagation. We begin the study by fitting the updated version of Kam’s Population-Balance (PPB) model (Kam, 2008) to the experimental data of Yu et al. (2020). The effects of surfactant concentration and foam quality on the kinetic of lamella coalescence is included in the model. We use the Local-Equilibrium (LE) version of this model to predict the critical superficial velocities for foam generation utgen and foam collapse utcol at various surfactant concentrations and foam qualities. Then we deploy numerical simulation in MATLAB (he MathWorks Inc., 2022) to predict the critical velocity for foam propagation utprop at the same injection conditions. Finally, we embark on a preliminary analysis for the optimization of foam injection strategy based on simulation results. The efficiency of foam injection is evaluated with respect to both cost and safety, namely, total time of injection, total PVI (and cost) of surfactants and gas, and near wellbore pressure etc. at the end of foam injection.
Our analysis shows that the LE version of the revised PPB model of Kam (2008) yields fairly accurate predictions of the critical superficial velocities for foam generation (Yu et al., 2019), foam propagation and foam collapse (Yu et al., 2020). In addition, simulation results reveal an important correlation between injection condition and the efficiency of long-distance foam propagation. We find that there is an optimum range of injection conditions for N2-foam at foam quality between 82% and 98% and surfactant concentration between 0.05 wt% and 0.5 wt%. Lastly, we briefly discuss the challenging aspects of simulation experiments on the generation and propagation of foam.
| References | Ashoori, E., Marchesin, D., and Rossen, W.R. (2011), Roles of transient and local equilibrium foam behavior in porous media: Traveling wave. Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects, 377 (1–3): 228-242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfa.2010.12.042Ashoori, E., Marchesin, D., and Rossen, W. R. (2012), Multiple Foam States and Long-Distance Foam Propagation in Porous Media. SPE J., 17 (4): 1231–1245. SPE-154024-PA. https://doi.org/10.2118/154024-PA Gauglitz, P.A., Friedmann, F., Kam, S.I., Rossen W.R. (2002), Foam Generation in Homogeneous Porous Media. J Chem Eng Sci, 57 (19): 4037–4052. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0009-2509(02)00340-8 Kam, S. I. (2008), Improved Mechanistic Foam Simulation with Foam Catastrophe Theory. J Coll & Surf A, 318 (1–3): 62–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfa.2007.12.0417 Lake, L.W., Johns, R.T., Rossen, W.R., Pope, G. A. Fundamentals of Enhanced Oil Recovery; Society of Petroleum Engineers, 2014, ISBN 978−1-61399−407−8. Rossen, W.R. and Gauglitz, P.A. (1990), Percolation theory of creation and mobilization of foams in porous media. AIChE J., 36: 1176-1188. https://doi.org/10.1002/aic.690360807 Rossen, W.R. Foams in Enhanced Oil Recovery. In Foams: Theory Measurement and Applications; Prud’homme, R. K., Khan, S., Eds.; Marcel Dekker: New York City, 1996. Rossen, W.R., Farajzadeh, R., Hirasaki, G.J., Amirmoshiri, M. (2024) Potential and challenges of foam-assisted CO2 sequestration. Geoenergy Science and Engineering, 239 (2024) 212929, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoen.2024.212929 The MathWorks Inc. (2022). MATLAB version: 9.12.0 (R2022a), Natick, Massachusetts: the MathWorks Inc. https://www.mathworks.com Yu, G., Rossen, W.R., and Vincent-Bonnieu, S. (2019), Coreflood Study of Effect of Surfactant Concentration on Foam Generation in Porous Media. J I&EC, 58 (1): 420–427. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.iecr.8b03141 Yu, G., Vincent-Bonnieu, S., Rossen, W.R. (2020)), Foam propagation at low superficial velocity: implications for long-distance foam propagation. SPE J., 25 (6): 3457–3471. https://doi.org/10.2118/201251-PA |
|---|---|
| Country | China |
| Acceptance of the Terms & Conditions | Click here to agree |
