Effect of Foam on Permeability of Porous Media to Gas
Authors: Bernard George G. , Holm L.W. 
Published: December 2007

Laboratory experiments were conducted to determine the effect of foam on gas flow in porous media. Previous studies have indicated that foam may be applicable as a restrictive agent in influencing underground gas flow. Foam was found to be exceedingly effective in reducing the permeability of porous media to gas. Consolidated and unconsolidated sands with specific permeabilities of 100 to 146,000 md had, in the presence of foam, gas permeabilities that were less than 1 per cent of the specific permeability; in many cases the gas permeability was practically zero. Foam reduced the gas permeability of loose sand to a much greater degree than that of a tight sand. For example, the permeability of a 125,000-md sand was reduced to 3 md while the permeability of a 4,000-md sand was reduced to 7 md. This effect should cause, to some degree, a selective plugging of high permeability channels in various oil displacement processes. The presence of oil in a porous medium decreased the effectiveness of foam in reducing gas permeability; apparently oil acts as a foam depressant. However, it was found that certain foaming agents were very effective in reducing permeability even in the presence of oil. Also, continuous injection of other foaming agents increased their effectiveness, when oil was present. The effect of foam on permeability of porous media to gas was studied as a function of foaming agent concentration and injection rate, absolute permeability, total pressure, pressure gradient, length of porous system, brine concentration and time.

Introduction

The use of surface active agents in flood water to increase the recovery of oil has been studied in the laboratory and in the field for decades, with rather limited success. In recent years a new approach to the problem was proposed. Instead of using an aqueous solution of surfactant as an oil recovery agent, Bond and Holbrook proposed that the oil recovery agent he a mixture of surfactant solution and gas. In their method, a water-soluble surface active agent with foam-producing characteristics is injected into an underground formation as an aqueous slug. This slug is followed by gas to produce a foam within the rock. Foams are defined as "agglomerations of gas bubbles separated from each other by thin liquid films." A foam is fundamentally an unstable system. The foam process for oil recovery has since been studied by other investigators. Fried has shown that foam can displace from porous structures oil that normally is unrecoverable by conventional water or gas drives. This superior oil displacing action is believed to be the result of several factors:

foam introduces into the reservoir many resilient interfaces of various sizes and curvatures, which increase the probability that a proper combination of forces for oil displacement will be created; foam has appreciable viscosity which improves mobility ratio and contact efficiency; foam accentuates the trapped gas effect because high gag saturations are possible without producing high gas/oil ratios.

Deming studied the effect of various foam properties on the displacement of liquid. He found that

high foaming ability favors high displacement efficiency; high foam stability is not necessary for high displacement efficiency; displacement efficiency decreases with increase in plasticity of foam and displacement efficiency is unaffected by surface tension of foaming agent solution.

One of the important aspects of this oil recovery process is the effect of foam on gas permeability. The simultaneous flow of gas and liquid in porous media has been studied by numerous investigators and a large amount of literature exists on the subject. In this previous work, gas and liquid have generally been considered as essentially independent phases, whose flow characteristics are related through the saturation parameter. Foam, however, is a material with properties that are considerably different from those of its components; for example, the viscosity of a foam is greater than either of its components.

SPEJ

P. 267ˆ