Experiment Study on a Novel Foam System for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract

Abstract. Foam, as a mobility control agent in enhanced oil recovery, is becoming more and more attractive. However, this method may be inefficient when water channeling appears in the reservoir due to its heterogeneity. Therefore, it is reasonable to block its flow through preferential channels by an enhanced foam system. A novel foam system is developed by the combination of general two phase foam system with solid particles to improve its performance for deep conformance control in reservoirs. This new foam system involves gas, liquid and particles. Firstly, micro-sphere shape and morphological distribution of particles have been observed through the microscope. Destruction mechanism and stability of multi-phase foam were analyzed in theory. In addition, the concentration of polymer and solid micro-sphere used as the foam agent were determined by orthogonal experiments. Next, micro-sphere displacement experiment shows that it can not only block throats but also migrate through throats by deformation, which can be represented by the pressure curves. Multi-phase foam system presents a similar pressure fluctuation with micro-sphere flooding. Finally, the parallel core experiments were conducted to investigate pressure distribution of two phase foam and multi-phase foam system in porous media respectively. The results show that multi-phase foam can effectively improve the profile control ability and it is adaptable for deep conformance in reservoir.