A comprehensive review of experimental studies of nanoparticles-stabilized foam for enhanced oil recovery

Abstract

Nanoparticles-stabilized foam has recently attracted increasing attention for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) applications, largely due to the potentially high stability of these foams in the oil producing formations. There are several research articles on experimental studies of nanoparticles-stabilized foam for EOR applications. However, no previous attempts has been made to comprehensively review these existing literature. To fill this identified knowledge gap, we conducted the first comprehensive review on current status of static stability experiments, macroscopic and microscopic scale experimental studies of nanoparticles-stabilized foam for EOR applications. Influence of different critical parameters on the foam performance was reviewed. The results of the previous studies were discussed, challenges and conflicting findings were identified and directions for further studies were suggested. Experiments were conducted by the authors to complement some of the results in literature. From the reviewed literature, results of experimental studies indicated that the presence of nanoparticles at an appropriate concentration and favorable hydrophobicity will improved the foam static and dynamic stability in porous media. Several critical parameters like nanoparticles types, salinity, oil presence, temperature and pressure control the efficiency of nanoparticle-stabilized foam. Review of the experimental methods showed that the pore-scale mechanisms of nanoparticles-stabilized foam generation, stability, propagation, and residual oil mobilizations in porous media are not yet explicit due to limited studies. Nanoparticles-stabilized foams for EOR have not been implemented in the field due to limited understanding of influence of controlling parameters on foam performance and insufficient mechanistic and modelling studies. The remarkable potential of nanoparticles-stabilized foam to recover the trapped oil from the low permeability layer of the heterogeneous formation, due to the occurrence of foam diversion, and the use of fly-ash nanoparticles for EOR applications remains an interesting topics for future studies.