An Experimental Study of High-Pressure Microscopy and Enhanced Oil Recovery with Nanoparticle-Stabilised Foams in Carbonate Oil Reservoir

Ayomikun Bello (), Anastasia Ivanova, Alexander Rodionov, Timur Aminev, Alexander Mishin, Denis Bakulin, Pavel Grishin, Pavel Belovus, Artem Penigin, Konstantin Kyzyma and Alexey Cheremisin
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Ayomikun Bello: Center for Petroleum Science and Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, 121205 Moscow, Russia
Anastasia Ivanova: Center for Petroleum Science and Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, 121205 Moscow, Russia
Alexander Rodionov: Center for Petroleum Science and Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, 121205 Moscow, Russia
Timur Aminev: Center for Petroleum Science and Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, 121205 Moscow, Russia
Alexander Mishin: Center for Petroleum Science and Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, 121205 Moscow, Russia
Denis Bakulin: Center for Petroleum Science and Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, 121205 Moscow, Russia
Pavel Grishin: Center for Petroleum Science and Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, 121205 Moscow, Russia
Pavel Belovus: Gazprom Neft STC LLC, 190000 Saint Petersburg, Russia
Artem Penigin: Gazprom Neft STC LLC, 190000 Saint Petersburg, Russia
Konstantin Kyzyma: Gazprom Neft-Orenburg LLC, 460000 Orenburg, Russia
Alexey Cheremisin: Center for Petroleum Science and Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, 121205 Moscow, Russia

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 13, 1-21

Abstract: Foams have been successfully implemented to overcome the challenges associated with gas-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) over time. Generally, the foam helps to increase the viscosity of the injected gas, which in turn improves the effectiveness of EOR. However, this technology has rarely been applied in the oilfield due to technological and economical limitations. It is widely considered that nanoparticles may be added to foam to enhance its performance in harsh reservoir conditions to overcome some of these limitations. In this study, we employed high-pressure microscopy (HPM) as an advanced technique to examine the stability of N 2 and C O 2 foams at reservoir conditions, both with and without nanoparticles. The experiments were conducted under vapour and supercritical conditions. Our results indicated that foams produced at 80% quality were more stable than foams produced at 50% quality because the bubble size was significantly smaller and the bubble count was higher. Additionally, foams under supercritical conditions (sc) exhibited greater stability than foams under vapour conditions. This is because at supercritical conditions, the high density of gases helps to strengthen the foam lamella by enhancing the intermolecular contacts between the gas and the hydrophobic part of the liquid phase. Furthermore, core flooding studies were performed to investigate their effect on oil displacement and mobility control in both real and artificial core samples. Rather than focusing on precise quantitative results, our objective was to assess the effect of foams on oil recovery qualitatively. The results indicated that foam injection could significantly increase displacement efficiency, as foam injection raised total displacement efficiency from an initial 48.9% to 89.7% in the artificial core sample. Similarly, in the real core model, C O 2 foam injection was implemented as a tertiary recovery method, and a recovery factor of 28.91% was obtained. These findings highlight the potential benefits of foams for EOR purposes and their ability to mitigate early gas breakthrough, which was observed after injecting approximately 0.14 PV during s c C O 2 injection.

Keywords: foam; CO 2; stability; EOR; high-pressure microscopy; nanoparticles (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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