Open Access

ARTICLE

Investigation on Nitrogen Foam Assisted Steam Flooding with Sand Production

Yongge Liu¹, Huiqing Liu¹, Qing Wang¹, Zhanxi Pang¹

1 MOE Key Laboratory of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, 102249, China.

Structural Longevity 2013, 9(2), 75-85. https://doi.org/10.3970/sl.2013.009.075

Abstract

Foam performances including interfacial tension, foam volume, halflife period and plugging ability are investigated in laboratory. A numerical model is built to simulate sand production during thermal recovery. The changes of reservoir permeability and steam breakthrough time after sand production are analyzed. Based on experimental results, an integrated model which considers foam generation, coalescence, oil acceleration on foam decay and sand production is built to study nitrogen foam assisted steam flooding with sand production. Simulation results show that foam can improve areal sweep efficiency and delay steam breakthrough time significantly. However, the adverse effect is that foam will intensify the sand production due to its high sand-carrying ability.

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Keywords

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