ECCOMAS 2024

Water-Gas-Oil Flows Including Foam in Heterogeneous Porous Media

  • de Paula, Filipe (Federal University of Juiz de Fora)
  • Igreja, Iury (Federal University of Juiz de Fora)
  • Chapiro, Grigori (Federal University of Juiz de Fora)

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An effective enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique is foam injection into the reservoir to control gas mobility. This approach significantly reduces viscous fingering and gravity override, improving oil production [1]. In this sense, we computationally investigated the influence of foam on three-phase flows in heterogeneous porous media. To this, we extend the sequential algorithm developed in [2, 3] through the oil phase inclusion. In this context, a mathematical foam model with non-Newtonian behavior is adopted, combined with a fractional flow formulation based on global pressure, including the surfactant in the water phase and foam in the gas phase. Numerically, a locally conservative hybrid finite element method is applied to approximate the hydrodynamics of the system and a central-upwind finite volume method for the phase transport equations. The resulting spatial discretized system is integrated in time using a multi-step, implicit finite difference method, and the hydrodynamics and transport equations are solved using a staggered algorithm in different time scales. The numerical methodology proposed is applied to study oil recovery using the Foam Assisted Water Alternating Gas (FAWAG) and Water Alternating Gas (WAG) techniques in a heterogeneous porous medium. The numerical results indicate an improvement in oil production when foam is present in the flow.