Effects of different gases on the performance of foams stabilized by Cocamidopropyl betaine surfactant and silica nanoparticles: A comparative experimental study

Abstract

Application of CO2 gas in foam enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes has emerged as a win-win strategy for achieving higher oil recovery factor and reducing greenhouse gas emission, which can significantly help the protection of the ozone layer from depletion. However, lower stability of CO2-foam, as compared to the N2- and CH4-foams, has tempted us to examine combinations of CO2 with these gases to not only improve the stability of the produced foam but also have CO2 as the gaseous phase of the foam. In this study, we investigated the effect of different gases and the mixture thereof on the performance of foams in EOR while the aqueous phase of foams is a constant mixture of Cocamidopropyl betaine surfactant (0.03 wt%) and silica nanoparticle (0.1 wt%). To this end, seven different gases, including N2, CO2, CH4, 80% N2 + 20% CO2, 80% CH4 + 20% CO2, 50% CH4 + 50% CO2, 50% N2 + 50% CO2 were used as the gases phase for foam generation and the performance of the produced foams were examined through the following experiments: bulk foam stability tests, apparent foam viscosity measurements and core flooding tests. The results of foam stability tests showed that half-life time for the CO2-, CH4- and N2-foams are 13.5, 17.0 and 44.0 min, respectively. Also, as revealed from apparent viscosity measurements, the N2- and 80% N2+20% CO2 foams have higher apparent foam viscosity values followed by 50% N2+50% CO2 foam. Furthermore, we showed that a combination of 80% N2 + 20% CO2 as the gaseous phase for foam generation could not only improve CO2-foam stability, as compared to other foams, but also can substantially increase ultimate oil recovery (56.6 %OOIP), even more than that for N2 foam (48.6 %OOIP), obtained from core flooding experiments.

Keywords

• Foam
• Carbon dioxide
• Nitrogen
• Methane
• Silica nanoparticles
• Surfactant