Foaming Behavior of CO2-Soluble, Viscoelastic Surfactant in Homogenous Porous Media

摘要

Aqueous foam has been demonstrated through laboratory and field experiments to be a promising conformance control technique. This study explores the foaming behavior of a CO2-soluble, cationic, amine- based surfactant. A distinguishing feature of this surfactant is its ability to dissolve in supercritical CO2 and to form Wormlike Micelles (WLM) at elevated salinity. Presence of WLM led to an increase in viscosity of the aqueous surfactant solution. Our study investigates how the presence of WLM structures affect transient foam behavior in a homogenous porous media (sand pack). Sand pack foam flooding experiments were performed with two aqueous phase salinities: low salinity (15 wt. % NaCl) associated with spherical-shaped micelle and high salinity (20 wt. % NaCl) associated with WLM. We compared the onset of strong foam propagation and foam apparent viscosity buildup rate between the two salinity cases. The effect of WLM presence in transient foam behavior was investigated for co-injection and water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection strategies. In all foam flooding experiments, the surfactant was delivered in the CO2 phase. Strong foam was generated in all foam flooding experiments, with an apparent foam viscosity of at least 600 cp for co-injection and 200 cp for WAG floods after five total injected pore volumes. The observed strong foam indicated that the delivery of surfactant in the CO2 phase was successful and that the surfactant molecules partition to the water phase in the sand pack. In comparison to the low salinity cases, the high salinity foam floods associated with the presence of WLM led to better foam performance. We observed an earlier onset of strong foam propagation as well as a higher apparent viscosity buildup rate. Better foam performance at higher salinity may be attributed in large part to the presence of WLM structures in the foam liquid phase. Entanglement of these WLM structures may have led to in-situ viscosification of the foam liquid phase and an increase in disjoining pressure between foam films. Both phenomena may have reduced the rate of foam film coalescence. WLM structures behave similarly to polymer molecules. Our study may offer evidence that WLM is a valid alternative to polymer as an additive to enhance foam conformance control performance. Some potential advantages of WLM over polymer include: Delivery of surfactant in the gas phase (to alleviate the injectivity issue typically associated with high viscosity polymer-surfactant solution), resistance to extreme temperature and salinity, and reversible shear degradation.