Pore-Scale Assessment of Nanoparticle-Stabilized CO2 Foam for Enhanced Oil Recovery

作者：Phong Nguyen, Hossein Fadaei, David Sinton · 发表于：Energy & Fuels · 年份：2014 · DOI：10.1021/ef5011995 · 被引用次数：180 · 研究领域：Enhanced Oil Recovery Techniques、Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization、Hydrocarbon exploration and reservoir analysis

In this paper, we evaluate nanoparticle-stabilized CO 2 foam stability and effectiveness in enhanced oil recovery at the pore and micromodel scales. The nanoparticle-stabilized CO 2 gas-in-brine foams maintain excellent stability within microconfined media and continue to be stable after 10 days, as compared to less than 1 day for surfactant foam. The nanoparticle-stabilized CO 2 foams are shown to generate a 3-fold increase in oil recovery (an additional 15% initial oil in place), as compared to an otherwise similar CO 2 gas flood. Fluorescence imaging is applied to quantify emulsion size distribution (down to 1 μm) in both CO 2 and nanoparticle-stabilized CO 2 foam flood cases. Nanoparticle-stabilized CO 2 foam flooding results in significantly smaller oil-in-water emulsion sizes with an average size of 1.7 μm (∼80% smaller than a CO 2 gas flood), with negligible impact on water-in-oil emulsions. The effectiveness of nanoparticle-stabilized CO 2 foam is compared for representative light, medium, and heavy oils. All three oils show substantial additional oil recovery and a potentially valuable reservoir homogenization effect. Collectively, these results highlight the pore-scale dynamics, effectiveness, and potential for nanoparticle-stabilized foams in enhanced oil recovery.