Experimental and Numerical Evaluation of Surfactant-Nanoparticles Foam for Enhanced Oil Recovery under High Temperature

In this article, experiments and simulations were conducted to evaluate performance of surfactant-nanoparticles foam for enhanced oil recovery under high temperature. Experimentally, the displacement behavior of surfactant-nanoparticles foam for enhanced oil recovery was studied by micromodel tests at 90 °C. The recovery performance of surfactant-nanoparticles foam flooding was analyzed by sandpack flooding experiments at 150 °C. Theoretically, a mechanistic model of surfactant-nanoparticles foam flooding was constructed. The micromodel tests indicate that the surfactant-nanoparticles foam was more stable than that of the surfactant foam in the porous media at 90 °C. The surfactant-nanoparticles foam could accumulated in the pores with less oil and increase the swept area. The crude oil could be emulsified into oil droplets by surfactant-nanoparticles foam which can greatly enhance the oil recovery. The sandpack flooding results show that the surfactant-nanoparticles foam had better recovery performance at 150 °C. Compared with the surfactant foam, the surfactant-nanoparticles foam produced from the sandpack flooding experiment had a smaller average particle size and higher sphericity. A mechanistic model of surfactant-nanoparticles foam flooding was constructed. A good match was achieved between the numerical simulation and sandpack flooding experiments in terms of pressure and oil recovery by adjusting the model parameters. The simulation study indicates that the performance of surfactant-nanoparticles foam flooding is better than that obtained by surfactant foam flooding under high temperature.