Experimental study of surfactant type effects on foam stability and mobility with the approach of enhancing oil recovery

Injection of foam into oil reservoir, is a new method for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). One of the advantages of using foam is the stable displacement of porous submersible oil due to its relative low mobility. The challenge for foam application in the oil recovery is to maintain its stability when it comes to contact with the oil phase. Therefore, before using foam in the EOR process, its properties and interactions with the oil must be characterized. in this research, by creating two different laboratory setups at the bubble and bulk scale, the foam stability contributing factors and the viscosity of different types of foam were measured. Changes of different type of foam’s height in the vertical column were studied at the bulk scale. Ate the bubble scale, by building a transparent hele-shaw cell that is equipped with pressure sensors, the evolution of the foam were examined quantitatively and qualitatively. The Results showed that the surfactant type had a significant effect on the stability of foam bubbles; so that the combination of 1:1 SDS and CAPB with the highest stability, increased foam half life time by 124% at the bubble scale and by %33 at the bulk scale. in the presence of the oil phase its destructive effect on foam stability, increased with the reduction of the viscosity and the density of the oil agent. Also, the results showed that the foam quality would directly affect the viscosity of the foam, while its flow rate had an inverse effect.