A laboratory study of enhancing heavy oil recovery with steam flooding by adding nitrogen foams

Abstract Two significant problems, steam override and steam channeling, decrease the sweep efficiency of steam to result in a lower oil recovery in heavy oil reservoirs. Thermal foam flooding, which is in fact steam flooding by adding non-condensate gas and foaming agent, presents a satisfactory effect in laboratory and field pilot. In this article, a new evaluation method was introduced to choose the optimum foaming agent for thermal foam flooding. The method considered the influence of temperature variation on the properties of foaming agent during steam flooding. Then the chosen surfactant and nitrogen were injected into the reservoir model in our experiments. The results showed that nitrogen foams effectively increased displacement efficiency of steam flooding from 43.30% to 81.24% in the single sand-pack experiment. Thermal foams can effectively improve injection profile to restrain steam injection from gravity override and steam channeling in reservoirs. Foaming agent is an important component in thermal foam flooding; on the one hand, it decreases oil–water interface tension to improve oil displacement efficiency, and on the other hand, it increases the stability of foams to improve sweep efficiency. Therefore, steam flooding by adding nitrogen foams is an effective EOR method to develop heavy oil reservoirs.

[1]  R. L. Eson,et al.  A Comprehensive Analysis of Steam Foam Diverters and Application Methods , 1989 .

[2]  Tadeusz W Patzek,et al.  Field Applications of Steam Foam for Mobility Improvement and Profile Control , 1996 .

[3]  G. Hirasaki.  The Steam-Foam Process , 1989 .

[4]  R. E. Dilgren,et al.  Surfactant-enhanced steam drives for heavy oil recovery , 1982 .

[5]  Qiang Liu,et al.  Surfactant enhanced alkaline flooding for Western Canadian heavy oil recovery , 2007 .

[6]  P. Keijzer,et al.  Surfactants for Mobility Control in High-Temperature Steam-Foam Applications , 1988 .

[7]  S. Mobeen Fatemi,et al.  Preliminary considerations on the application of toe-to-heel steam flooding (THSF): Injection well-producer well configurations , 2011 .

[8]  A. Kovscek,et al.  Foam Mobility in Heterogeneous Porous Media , 2003 .

[9]  G. J. Clark,et al.  Steam-Foam Diversion Process Developed To Overcome Steam Override in Athabasca , 1991 .

[10]  Subir K. Sanyal,et al.  A Field Experiment of Improved Steamdrive With In-Situ Foaming , 1984 .

[11]  A. R. Kovscek,et al.  Foam Mobility in Heterogeneous Porous Media , 2003 .

[12]  L. Schramm,et al.  The destabilization of foams for improved oil recovery by crude oils: Effect of the nature of the oil , 1992 .

[13]  M. Quintard,et al.  Oil recovery by steam injection: three-phase flow effects , 1996 .

[14]  Z. Pang,et al.  Physical simulation and fine digital study of thermal foam compound flooding , 2012 .

[15]  P. Zitha,et al.  Coupling of Foam Drainage and Viscous Fingering in Porous Media Revealed by X-ray Computed Tomography , 2006 .

[16]  M. Dong,et al.  The dominant mechanism of enhanced heavy oil recovery by chemical flooding in a two-dimensional physical model , 2013 .

[17]  R. Kharrat,et al.  The influence of pore wettability on the microstructure of residual oil in surfactant-enhanced water flooding in heavy oil reservoirs: Implications for pore-scale flow characterization , 2011 .

[18]  E. Okandan,et al.  Experimental Analysis of Steam Foam Injection to Heavy Oil Limestone Reservoirs , 1987 .

[19]  Cheng-zhi Yang,et al.  Present status of EOR in the Chinese petroleum industry and its future , 1991 .

[20]  L. Yongjian,et al.  The study on composition changes of heavy oils during steam stimulation processes , 2002 .

[21]  D. Shah,et al.  Effect of oil viscosity on recovery processes in relation to foam flooding , 1984 .

[22]  T. Patzek,et al.  Kern River Steam-Foam Pilots , 1990 .

[23]  F. Friedmann,et al.  Some Parameters Influencing the Formation and Propagation of Foams in Porous Media , 1986 .

[24]  F. Friedmann,et al.  Steam-Foam Mechanistic Field Trial in the Midway-Sunset Field , 1994 .

[25]  P. Zitha,et al.  A CT Scan Study of Immiscible Foam Flow in Porous Media for EOR , 2012 .

[26]  Songyan Li,et al.  Experimental study and application on profile control using high-temperature foam , 2011 .

[27]  Xiu-Sheng Li,et al.  Mechanistic simulation studies on the steam-foam drive in superviscous oil reservoirs , 2004 .