Bubble-population-balance modeling for supercritical carbon dioxide foam enhanced-oil-recovery processes: From pore-scale to core-scale and field-scale events

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

1-1-2019

Abstract

A bubble-population-balance foam-modeling technique is developed to investigate how carbon dioxide (CO2) foam behaves rheologically and propagates in a field-scale radial system. The modeling technique is based on pore-scale events and honors three different foam states (weak, strong, and intermediate) and two steady-state strong-foam-flow regimes (high- and low-quality) measured in corescale experiments. The model parameters are first obtained from a fit to laboratory-coreflood experimental data, and then the mechanistic model is applied to different types of CO2 foams, ranging from gaseous to supercritical-CO2 foams, represented by various mobilization pressure gradients. The results from the fit to existing coreflood data show that a reasonable match can be made satisfying multiple constraints, such as hysteresis exerted by three foam states, non-Newtonian flow behavior caused by gas trapping and shear-thinning rheology, and bubble stability in different capillary pressure environments. When applied to field-scale scenarios, supercritical-CO2 foams requiring low mobilization pressure gradients propagate much farther than gaseous-CO2 foams, far enough to make use of promising supercritical-CO2 foams in the field. This study, for the first time, theoretically demonstrates why supercritical-CO2 foams should be preferred in the field compared with gaseous N2 or CO2 foams. The companion paper to extend this study to full-field-scale foam propagation in conjunction with gravity segregation is Izadi and Kam (2018).

Publication Source (Journal or Book title)

SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering

First Page

1467

Last Page

1480

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS