(590i) Visualization Foam Destruction in Porous Media Micromodels

A microfluidic model of porous media with permeability contrast was designed to study foam stability in the presence of oil. The smart rheology of foam can help mitigate reservoir heterogeneity by separating into dry- and wet-phases such that the flow resistance in high-perm region is much higher than that in low-perm region. Foam bubbles are able to block the high-perm region and divert fluids into low permeable regions. One hypothesis is that the phase separation of foam is due to the difference in capillary entry pressure. Here we will describe the behavior of foam in the presence of various oils in the micromodels. We systematically compared the effect of crude oil with paraffin oil on foam film stability. We found out that crude oil is more detrimental to foam because of its complex composition. It is also noted that foam stability in presence of crude oil can be greatly enhanced by blending anionic surfactant with zwitterionic surfactant like betaines.