Full text loading...
-
Effect of Newtonian and Non-Newtonian Viscosifying Agents on the Stability of Foam for EOR - Part I, under Bulk Condition
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, IOR 2017 - 19th European Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery, Apr 2017, Volume 2017, p.1 - 16
- Previous article
- Table of Contents
- Next article
Abstract
Foam has shown poor stability with respect to oil for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) applications, and stimulation processes in the oil-well operations for the oil fields.This paper presents a laboratory study to investigate the effect of Newtonian and non-Newtonian viscosity enhancement materials on the stability of foam under bulk conditions. For this goal, glycerol and hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) were utilized to enhance the viscosity of foaming agent solutions, which were composed of Alpha-Olefin Sulfonate (AOS) surfactant and salinity. To this end, a comparative study of the foam stability for the solution containing different percentages of glycerol and polymer was undertaken. In the foam stability analysis which examined in the absence of the oleic phase, several characteristics such as foam volume evolution, foam half-decay time and a liquid fraction of foam were measured over a wide range of concentrations. Measuring conductivity and volume of injected gas during foam generation and foam decay provided the foam capacity (FC) and the maximum density (MD) to characterize the generated foam more accurately. Results of bulk foam experiments indicated polymer and glycerol could either increase or reduce the foamability, but both materials increased foam stability with the certain range of concentration. This could be explained by the fact that increasing the viscosity of the liquid phase of foam attributed to decreasing the velocity of liquid drainage out of the foam structure. Tow regimes of foam drainage and coalescence were different for the same viscosity of solutions containing either glycerol or HPAM polymer. The solutions containing glycerol exhibited a small but sharp decay right after gas sparging stopped, while for high polymer concentrations this didn’t happen.