Carbon dioxide foam mobility

Carbon Dioxide—Foam Mobility Measurements at High Pressure... 

Borchardt, J. K., Bright, D. B., Dickson, M. K., and Welhngton, S. L., 1988. Surfactants for Carbon Dioxide Foam Flooding , in Surfactant-Based Mobility Control - Progress in Miscible-Flood Enhanced Oil Recovery, D. H. Smith (Ed.), ACS Symposium Series, 373, Washington, DC, Chapter 8. 

Recently, use of a surfactant in the injected water such that a foam or emulsion is formed with carbon dioxide has been proposed (20.21) and research is proceeding on finding appropriate surfactants (22-24). The use of such a foam or emulsion offers the possibility of providing mobility control combined with amelioration of the density difference, a combination which should yield improved oil recovery. Laboratory studies at the University of Houston (25) with the same five-spot bead-pack model as used before show that this is so, for both the relatively water-wet and relatively oil-wet condition. We have now simulated, with a finite-difference reservoir process computer program, the laboratory model results under non-WA3, WAG, and foam displacement conditions for both secondary and tertiary recovery processes. This paper presents the results of that work. 

Surfactants are used extensively in enhanced oil recovery. Applications include micellar floods or flooding in conjunction with polymers, alkalis, steam or carbon dioxide. Another apphcation is the generation of foams for mobility control or blocking and diverting. For each of these applications care must be taken in selecting the surfactants. Surfactants tend to be a major portion of the costs associated with FOR, and losing surfactant to adsorption leads to substantial economic losses. 

Closed-cell PEN foams were for the first time produced by Sorrentino, Aurilia, and lannace in 2011 (2011). They used a batch foaming apparatus to solubilize carbon dioxide into amorphous PEN. Foams were produced within an extended temperature range (from 100 to 240 C) and were characterized by relative densities ranging from 0.13 to 0.44 and average cell size between 5 and 15 pm. Cell nucleation strongly increased above PEN glass transition temperature, as a consequence of the higher molecular mobility. 

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