Effect of Surfactant Partitioning Between Gaseous Phase and Aqueous Phase on \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) Foam Transport for Enhanced Oil Recovery

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• 作者：Yongchao Zeng ; Kun Ma ; Rouhi Farajzadeh ; Maura Puerto…
• 关键词：Nonionic surfactant ; Partition coefficient ; \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) ; Foam ; Gas breakthrough ; Mobility control ; Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) ; IMPES ; Fractional flow theory
• 刊名：Transport in Porous Media
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：September 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：114
• 期：3
• 页码：777-793
• 全文大小：2,710 KB
• 刊物类别：Earth and Environmental Science
• 刊物主题：Earth sciences
  Geotechnical Engineering
  Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
  Civil Engineering
  Hydrogeology
  Mechanics, Fluids and Thermodynamics
  
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-1634
• 卷排序：114

文摘

\(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) flood is one of the most successful and promising enhanced oil recovery technologies. However, the displacement is limited by viscous fingering, gravity segregation and reservoir heterogeneity. Foaming the \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) and brine with a tailored surfactant can simultaneously address these three problems and improve the recovery efficiency. Commonly chosen surfactants as foaming agents are either anionic or cationic in class. These charged surfactants are insoluble in either \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) gas phase or supercritical phase and can only be injected with water. However, some novel nonionic or switchable surfactants are \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) soluble, thus making it possible to be injected with the \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) phase. Since surfactant could be present in both \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) and aqueous phases, it is important to understand how the surfactant partition coefficient influences foam transport in porous media. Thus, a 1-D foam simulator embedded with STARS foam model is developed. All test results, from different cases studied, have demonstrated that when surfactant partitions approximately equally between gaseous phase and aqueous phase, foam favors oil displacement in regard to apparent viscosity and foam propagation speed. The test results from the 1-D simulation are compared with the fractional flow theory analysis reported in the literature.