Evaluating Foam Stability using Tailored Water Chemistry for Gas Mobility Control Applications

Abstract

Abstract Generating in-situ foam is regarded as one of the most promising techniques to overcome gas mobility issues and improve sweep efficiency in both miscible and immiscible gas injection enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes. Gravity override, viscous fingering and channeling through permeable zones are the major limiting factors that can impair the efficiency of gas floods, mainly due to low density and viscosity of the gas relative to reservoir fluids. Generating strong and stable foam while injecting gas is one way to achieve in-depth conformance improvement in the reservoir. In this study, a tailored water chemistry (formulated low salinity water) has been evaluated in comparison to using typical high salinity injection water (i.e. seawater) and deionized water in surfactant solutions to determine its overall effect on the produced foam. Using bulk foam tests, foam rheology apparatus and microfluidics device, the foam stabilization factors were analyzed and quantified by measuring the foam-life over time of different surfactants in varying salinity water solutions. In addition, the foam rheological properties were measured under high pressure. The microfluidics device was also used to examine the generated foam strength in porous media. The results from laboratory experiments clearly demonstrated that the use of tailored water chemistry can improve the stability of produced foam when compared to both high salinity water and deionized water. Low salinity tailored water chemistry solutions resulted in a longer lasting foam, by almost 1.8-3.0 times depending on the surfactant type. The foam rheology results showed that the produced foams with the tailored low salinity water are of higher apparent viscosity when compared to those obtained with deionized water. Both longer foam-life and higher apparent viscosity are indicative of better, stronger and more stable foam. The higher resistance to gas flow was observed in porous media with foams generated using the low salinity tailored water chemistry solutions when compared to those foams obtained with deionized water and high salinity water. This experimental study, for the first time, demonstrated substantial improvements in the foam stability by using a tailored water chemistry aqueous solution. Such huge foam stabilization improvements obtained with tailored water chemistry has the promising potential to increase the apparent viscosity of injected gas and subsequently more effectively mitigate gas mobility issues encountered in EOR applications.