Small core flood experiments for foam EOR: Screening surfactant applications

Small core flood experiments for foam EOR: Screening surfactant applications

Jones, S.A.
Van der Bent, V.
Farajzadeh, R.
Rossen, W.R.
Vincent-Bonnieu, S.

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Geoscience & Engineering

2015-04-14

Aqueous foams are a means of increasing the sweep efficiency of enhanced oil recovery processes. An understanding of how a foam behaves in the presence of oil is therefore of great importance when selecting suitable surfactants for EOR processes. The consensus is currently that the most reliable method for determining the foam behavior in the presence of oil is to inject foam through a rock core. Coreflood tests, however, are typically carried out using large rock cores (e.g. diameter = 4 cm, length = 40 cm or longer), and hence foam flow tests can take days or weeks to achieve steady-state flow. In this study, we present the preliminary results for a core-flood system where the rock core is pen-sized (diameter = 1 cm, length = 17 cm). These small cores allow for short-duration foam flow tests, where steady-state flow is achieved in a few hours. Using this system, the foam quality/effective viscosity response curves can be plotted, both with and without oil in the system. These small size cores then enable rapid screening of surfactants and foam properties in different rocks and with different oils. Benefits and limitations of these small coreflood experiments are discussed.

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6fd4cbd5-a95d-4c90-b3d8-0ba95e5c39b1

EAGE

IOR 2015: 18th European Symposium on Improved Oil Recovery, Dresden, Germany, 14-16 April 2015

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2015 The Author(s)