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Experimental investigation of immiscible supercritical carbon dioxide foam rheology for improved oil recovery

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An Erratum to this article was published on 28 November 2017

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Abstract

This paper presents the rheological behaviour of supercritical CO2 (sCO2) foam at reservoir conditions of 1 500 psi and 80 °C. Different commercial surfactants were screened and utilized in order to generate a fairly stable CO2 foam. Mixed surfactant system was also introduced to generate strong foam. Foam rheology was studied for some specific foam qualities using a high pressure high temperature (HPHT) foam loop rheometer. A typical shear thinning behaviour of the foam was observed and a significant increase in the foam viscosity was noticed with the increase of foam quality until 85%. A desired high apparent viscosity with coarse texture was found at 85% foam quality. Foam visualization above 85% showed an unstable foam due to extremely thin lamella which collapsed and totally disappeared in the loop rheometer. Below 52%, a non-homogenous and unstable foam was found having low viscosity with some liquid accumulation at the bottom of the circulation loop. This research has demonstrated rheology of sCO2 foams at different qualities at HPHT to obtain optimal foam quality region for immiscible CO2 foam co-injection process.

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  • 28 November 2017

    The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The presentation of an author’s name was incorrect. The corrected one is given below.

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Acknowledgment

Authors greatly appreciate the financial support by Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS (No. YUTP-0153AA-E70). This work has been done in the laboratory of PETRONAS Research Sdn Bhd which is highly acknowledged. AkzoNobel, Stepan, Shell and Evonik Industries are also deeply acknowledged for supplying chemicals. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-017-0803-z.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Petroleum Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, 32610, Malaysia

    Shehzad Ahmed, Khaled Abdalla Elraies & Jalal Forooozesh

  2. PETRONAS Research Sdn Bhd, Bangi, 43000, Malaysia

    Siti Rohaida Bt Mohd Shafian & Ivy Chai Ching Hsia

  3. Department of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum Institute, 2533, Abu Dhabi, UAE

    Muhammad Rehan Hashmet

  4. National Center for Oil & Gas Technology, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, 11442, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Abdullah Almansour

Authors
  1. Shehzad Ahmed
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  2. Khaled Abdalla Elraies
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  3. Jalal Forooozesh
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  4. Siti Rohaida Bt Mohd Shafian
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  5. Muhammad Rehan Hashmet
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  6. Ivy Chai Ching Hsia
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  7. Abdullah Almansour
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Correspondence to Shehzad Ahmed.

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An erratum to this article is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-017-0784-y.

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Ahmed, S., Elraies, K.A., Forooozesh, J. et al. Experimental investigation of immiscible supercritical carbon dioxide foam rheology for improved oil recovery. J. Earth Sci. 28, 835–841 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-017-0803-z

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