Enhanced oil recovery by CO/sub 2/ foam flooding. Final report

Technical Report · Thu Jul 01 00:00:00 EDT 1982

OSTI ID:5378928

Patton, J T

The objective of this project is to identify commercially available additives which are effective in reducing the mobility of carbon dioxide, CO/sub 2/, thereby improving its efficiency in the recovery of tertiary oil, and which are low enough in cost to be economically attractive. Experiments on gas mobility control, conducted in linear sand-pack models, show only a general correlation with the static foam test. The static test, which utilizes a blender to generate foam from an aqueous surfactant solution, is useful mainly for studying the effects of pH, temperature, salinity and crude oil on the relative foamability of any given surfactant. In general, all surfactants which produce reasonable quantities of foam in the blender test also impart some degree of mobility control to gas during two-phase flow. The best mobility control additives; however, are only modest foam volume producers. They all spontaneously produce a viscous foam under flow conditions present in a petroleum reservoir. Three basic chemical structures appear to show most promise for gas mobility control: (1.) Ethoxylated adducts of C/sub 8/ - C/sub 14/ linear alcohols; (2.) Sulfate ethers of ethoxylated C/sub 9/ - C/sub 16/ linear alcohols; and (3.) Low molecular weight co-polymers of ethylene oxide and propylene oxide. A significant portion of the research effort centered on the rheology of foams. These studies were conducted in small capillaries of varying length and diameter. Mobility control increased recovery by 40% over a CO/sub 2/ enhanced waterflood and 93% over a conventional waterflood plus primary production. No adverse effects, such as emulsion formation, due to mobility control additives were noted. Mass transfer of CO/sub 2/ from the foam to the oil did not appear to be impeded. (DMC)

• Research Organization: New Mexico Univ., Albuquerque (USA). New Mexico Energy Research and Development Inst.; New Mexico State Univ., Las Cruces (USA). Dept. of Chemical Engineering
• OSTI ID: 5378928
• Report Number(s): NP-2906120; ON: DE82906120
• Resource Relation: Other Information: Portions of document are illegible
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
CARBON DIOXIDE INJECTION
ADDITIVES
OIL WELLS
ALCOHOLS
CONTROL
COPOLYMERS
ENHANCED RECOVERY
ETHERS
FOAMS
MOBILITY
OPTIMIZATION
PETROLEUM
RHEOLOGY
SURFACTANTS
COLLOIDS
DISPERSIONS
ENERGY SOURCES
FLUID INJECTION
FOSSIL FUELS
FUELS
HYDROXY COMPOUNDS
MISCIBLE-PHASE DISPLACEMENT
ORGANIC COMPOUNDS
ORGANIC OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
ORGANIC POLYMERS
POLYMERS
RECOVERY
WELLS
020300* - Petroleum- Drilling & Production