Steps and Challenges in Empirical Foam Modeling for Enhanced Oil Recovery
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Review Paper
Steps and Challenges in Empirical Foam Modeling for Enhanced Oil Recovery Ali Saeibehrouzi ,1,3 Maryam Khosravi,2 and Behzad Rostami1 Received 15 October 2019; accepted 23 December 2019
Implicit texture/empirical foam model is one of the most commonly used approaches for enhanced oil recovery; however, a comprehensive set of standard steps of a foam simulation study is not yet introduced. In this paper, a practical package consisting of different methods/ steps has been compiled. In addition, their strengths, weaknesses, and challenges are described. This paper has shown that surfactant formula can have a substantial impact on probability of micro-emulsion (ME) creation or rock curves alteration during foam injection. Depending on the severity of surfactant influence on rock and fluid properties, capillary pressure and relative permeability curves should be modified or viscosity model should be corrected in the case of ME formation. This review has studied distinct approaches for the modification of rock curves or the correction of viscosity in the presence of ME. From a review of literature, foam flood experiments can be carried out in distinct media. Foam behavior, however, in core flood experiments resembles more the foam performance in reservoir condition. Various well-known algorithms for obtaining foam model parameters are explained and compared here. Based on differences between experimental conditions and pilot tests, up-scaling simulation parameters, including foam model and adsorption coefficients, are described extensively. Because media permeability has a significant effect on foam model parameters, it is also shown here that considering more than one foam model for simulation can increase the precision of results. KEY WORDS: Empirical foam parameters, Foam simulation, Foam parameters up-scaling, Surfactant screening, Rock curves alteration, Micro-emulsion modeling.
INTRODUCTION Gas injection is being used extensively for enhancing oil recovery (EOR). This process, however, lacks proper volumetric sweep efficiency and finally leads to channeling (Schramm et al. 1993). Since the late 1950s, foam has been suggested as an 1
Institute of Petroleum Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Karegar St., Tehran, Iran. 2 IOR Research Institute (IORI), Tehran, Iran. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed; e-mail: [email protected]
agent to control gas mobility within a reservoir and has been utilized in various applications such as EOR (Kular et al. 1989; Blaker et al. 1999; Chalbaud et al. 2002; Farajzadeh et al. 2010; Li et al. 2010; Guo et al. 2011; Skoreyko et al. 2012), acidizing and fracturing (Blauer and Kohlhaas 1974; Bullen and Bratrud 1975; Bernadiner et al. 1992; Rossen and Wang 1999). In porous media, foam can be defined as a dispersion of gas in a liquid in which at least some portion of the gas is made discontinuous by thin liquid films called lamellae (Falls et al. 1988). Foam reduces gas mobility by altering either gas relativ
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