Condensate Oil-Tolerant Foams Stabilized by an Anionic-Sulfobetaine Surfactant Mixture.

Abstract

Foams are widely used to remove liquid loading at the bottom of gas wells to improve natural gas production. However, it becomes ineffective when a gas well contains a large amount of hydrocarbon condensate because oil will rupture the foams. In this work, condensate oil-tolerant foams were developed and stabilized by a mixture of cocamidopropyl hydroxyl sulfobetaine (CHSB) and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). The foam properties are examined at different temperatures under atmospheric conditions and high pressures with various contents of condensate oil. It is found that the foam stability is improved when the oil content is increased; in addition, high temperature, high salinity, and high pressure are beneficial for foam stabilizing. To reveal the mechanism of stable foam in the presence of high content of oil, a confocal microscope was employed to visualize oil–foam interactions. It was observed that the high stability of the SDS–CHSB foams is ascribed to the formation of stable pseudoemulsion between oil droplets and the gas–liquid interface. Such condensate oil-tolerant foams show promising potential to be used in the foam-assisted lift process during natural gas production.