EOR using foam

Mathematical and computational modeling of foam injection as an enhanced oil recovery technique applied to Brazil pre-salt reservoirs

International collaboration between UFJF (Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil), TU Delft (Delft University of Technology, Holland) and PUC-Rio (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) supported by Shell Brazil

The main objectives of this 4-year project are:

  • Improve the understanding of physics and mathematics describing the foam displacement in porous media as an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique applied to Brazil pre-salt reservoirs.EOR
  • Develop analytic and numerical methods that can be used to test and validate commercial simulators.

The main deliverables of this project are:

  • Formulation of simple models describing foam displacement, that can be investigated mathematically.
  • Formulation and implementation of precise and robust numerical methods to simulate foam displacement in porous media.
  • The detailed analysis of the solutions obtained mathematically and numerically allowing the validation of commercial simulators.

The project has a strongly multidisciplinary appeal bringing together the mathematical analysis and numerical simulations performed in UFJF, experimental investigation realized in PUC-Rio and physical modeling assisted by renowned experts in foam EOR from TU Delft.

A Numerical Algorithm to Solve the Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media Including Foam Displacement
FF de Paula, T Quinelato, I Igreja, G Chapiro
International Conference on Computational Science, 18-31 2020

Uncertainty quantification and sensitivity analysis for relative permeability models of two-phase flow in porous media
AR Valdez, BM Rocha, G Chapiro, RW dos Santos
Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, 107297 2020

Um estudo de quantificação de incertezas e análise de sensibilidade de funções de fluxo fracionário da equação de Buckley-Leverett
A Valdez, RW dos Santos, G Chapiro, BM Rocha
Proceeding Series of the Brazilian Society of Computational and Applied Mathematics 2020

Mathematical properties of the foam flow in porous media
L. F. Lozano, R. Q. Zavala, G. Chapiro
Computational Geosciences, 25, 1, 515–527, 2021

Foam‐Assisted Water–Gas Flow Parameters: From Core‐Flood Experiment to Uncertainty Quantification and Sensitivity Analysis
Andrés R. Valdez, Bernardo M. Rocha, Juliana Maria da Fonseca Façanha, Alexandre Vilela Oliveira de Souza, Aurora Pérez‐Gramatges, Grigori Chapiro, Rodrigo Weber dos Santos

Transport in Porous Media, 2021
doi: 10.1007/s11242-021-01550-0

 

 

FOSSIL – FOam diSplacement SImuLator 

By Filipe F. de Paula, Thiago Quinelato and Iury Igreja.
  • FOSSIL is our in-house developed simulator of the two-phase non-Newtonian flow of foam through heterogeneous porous media. Combining cutting-edge numerical methods with shared memory parallel computing, FOSSIL provides high-quality simulations of the flow of both compressible and incompressible fluids in a multitude of scenarios including gravity effects and preserving mass conservation. Its intuitive input format allows the user to choose between several mechanistic and population-balance based foam models, various relative permeability and capillary pressure relations, and flexible injection and control criteria.