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Experimental investigation and multi-scale simulations of CO2 foam flooding for enhanced oil recovery
Capillarity 2025, 16(2): 39-50
Published: 15 June 2025
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CO2 flooding in low-permeability and tight oil reservoirs is frequently compromised by severe gas channeling, which significantly reduces oil recovery and sweep efficiency. While foam flooding can effectively mitigate CO2 channeling by trapping CO2 within lamellae, its stability deteriorates under harsh high-temperature, high-salinity reservoir conditions, compromising its effectiveness. Furthermore, foam flow in porous media involves constant foam generation, collapse and propagation, making its flow behaviors difficult to predict. To address these challenges, a new foaming agent with satisfactory regenerative capability is developed to maintain gas mobility control under harsh reservoir conditions. The multiphase flow behaviors during CO2 foam flooding are predicted using pore network modeling to obtain the corresponding relative permeability curves, which are further incorporated into a reservoir simulator to evaluate field-scale foam flooding performances, as well as optimize injection strategies. This multi-scale modeling approach establishes a quantitative link between pore-scale foam behaviors and field-scale oil recovery performances, offering new insights into carbon capture and utilization with enhanced oil recovery in low-permeability and tight reservoirs.

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