Study of foam flow principles across horizontal heterogeneity

A considerable number of technical papers have been published by many researchers on studies of foam behavior in porous medium. Also, experimental studies were conducted before this work to facilitate understanding of the behavior of foam flow and its application in gas flooding processes. The experiments which were reviewed by the author were designed to observe and quantify the behavior of foam under various conditions, such as foam quality, surfactant concentration, and temperature. Most of the papers concentrated on descriptions of foam behavior in laboratory coreflood tests, and its effectiveness as mobility control agent for different types of gases.
This report reviews the mechanisms and theories suggested in the literature to explain the impact of horizontal heterogeneity on foam flow.
As foam flow in porous media is complex study, it demands analysis of its behavior under conditions involving simpler constraints. Considering this, current research intends to meet the demand and expectations of analysing reservoir parameters affecting foam flow across horizontal heterogeneity, investigation of foam model parameters, and analysis of different strategies for foam flooding processes.
In this work, effect of several parameters were analysed and the author intended to correlate the results to each other. Effect of heterogeneity due to permeability and porosity were studied under various model conditions. In addition, the change in gas mobility reduction factor due to fluctuations in surfactant concentration and water saturation were inspected to achieve the second objective of the work.
The structure of the paper is as follows: initially, deeper insight to the problem is given. Then, knowledge and information obtained by author from the previously completed works is summarized. Results achieved up to date are presented, and their discussion is given. Finally, the paper ends with the summary of the author’s own conclusions and understandings.