Foaminess and Viscosity Effects in Heavy Oil Flow

Abstract

Abstract Foamy oil viscosity is a controversial topic among researchers as to what happens to the apparent oil viscosity when the dispersed gas bubbles start migrating with the oil. For conventional oils, below the true bubble point pressure, the oil viscosity increases as the gas freely evolves from the oil. For foamy oils, it has been suggested that the apparent viscosity of gas-in-oil dispersion remains relatively constant, or perhaps declines slightly, between the true bubble point and a characteristic lower pressure, called pseudo bubble point, which is the pressure at which the gas starts separating from the oil. Below this pressure, the viscosity increases, reaching the dead oil value at atmospheric pressure. However, it is a well known fact in dispersion rheology that the viscosity of dispersion is higher than the viscosity of the continuous phase. Therefore, the concept of foamy oil viscosity being lower than the oil viscosity is counterintuitive. The major difference here is the extreme viscosity of the base liquid phase for foamy oil and how this interacts with the gas phase in a porous medium. The reported results appear to be very oil specific in this area, and are also a very strong function of how rapidly pressure is depleted in a given system. It is also likely that the apparent viscosity for flow of foamy oil in porous media is not the true dispersion viscosity due to the size of dispersed bubbles being comparable to the pore sizes. This study aims to investigate this issue by measuring the foamy oil viscosity under varied conditions. The effect of several parameters, such as shear/flow rate, foaminess and gas volume fraction on foamy oil viscosity was experimentally evaluated. A slim tube packed with sand was used to measure the apparent viscosity of gas-in-oil dispersions. The results show that the apparent viscosity of foamy oils is considerably higher than the live oil viscosity. . The results obtained also showed that the presence of an added foaming agent had only a minor impact on the apparent viscosity of foamy oil, especially at higher expansion factors. Also, at the same expansion factor, the apparent viscosity was higher at higher flow rate. Overall, the presence of a foaming agent resulted in enhanced dispersed flow of gas, as evidenced from the size of bubbles being produced and the observed pressure fluctuations