CO<sub>2</sub> Foam and CO<sub>2</sub> Polymer Enhanced Foam for Heavy Oil Recovery and CO<sub>2</sub> Storage

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) from heavy oil reservoirs is challenging. High oil viscosity, high mobility ratio, inadequate sweep, and reservoir heterogeneity adds more challenges and severe difficulties during any EOR method. Foam injection showed potential as an EOR method for challenging and hetero...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Ali Telmadarreie, Japan J Trivedi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2020-11-01
Series:Energies
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/21/5735
Description
Summary:Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) from heavy oil reservoirs is challenging. High oil viscosity, high mobility ratio, inadequate sweep, and reservoir heterogeneity adds more challenges and severe difficulties during any EOR method. Foam injection showed potential as an EOR method for challenging and heterogeneous reservoirs containing light oil. However, the foams and especially polymer enhanced foams (PEF) for heavy oil recovery have been less studied. This study aims to evaluate the performance of CO<sub>2</sub> foam and CO<sub>2</sub> PEF for heavy oil recovery and CO<sub>2</sub> storage by analyzing flow through porous media pressure profile, oil recovery, and CO<sub>2</sub> gas production. Foam bulk stability tests showed higher stability of PEF compared to that of surfactant-based foam both in the absence and presence of heavy crude oil. The addition of polymer to surfactant-based foam significantly improved its dynamic stability during foam flow experiments. CO<sub>2</sub> PEF propagated faster with higher apparent viscosity and resulted in more oil recovery compared to that of CO<sub>2</sub> foam injection. The visual observation of glass column demonstrated stable frontal displacement and higher sweep efficiency of PEF compared to that of conventional foam. In the fractured rock sample, additional heavy oil recovery was obtained by liquid diversion into the matrix area rather than gas diversion. Aside from oil production, the higher stability of PEF resulted in more gas storage compared to conventional foam. This study shows that CO<sub>2</sub> PEF could significantly improve heavy oil recovery and CO<sub>2</sub> storage.
ISSN:1996-1073