Nanoparticle-stabilized supercritical CO₂ foams for potential mobility control applications

The petroleum industry has been utilizing surfactant stabilized foams for mobility control and enhanced oil recovery applications. However, if surface-treated nanoparticles were utilized instead of surfactants, the foams could have a number of important advantages. The solid-stabilized foams are known to have a much better stability than the surfactant-stabilized foams, because the energy required to bring nanoparticles to, and detach from the foam bubble surface is much larger than that of surfactants, and thus the resulting foam will be more stable. Since nanoparticles are the stabilizing component of the foam and are solid, they have potential to stabilize foam at high temperature conditions for extended periods of time. Since they are inherently small, nanoparticles, as well as the foam that they stabilize, can be transported through rocks without causing plugging in pore throats.

Stable supercritical carbon dioxide-in-water foams were created using 5 nm silica-core nanoparticles whose surface had short polyethylene-glycol chains covalently bonded to it. The foams were made by injecting CO2 and an dispersion of with surface-treated nanoparticles simultaneously through a glass-bead pack. The fluids flowing through this permeable media created shear rates of about 1350 sec-1. Nanoparticle concentration, nanoparticle coating, water salinity, volume ratios between CO2 and water, temperature and shear rates were systematically varied in order to define the range of conditions for foam generation. Using de-ionized water to dilute the nanoparticle concentration, we were able to generate stable foams were at nanoparticle concentrations as low as 0.05 weight percent. Among the different surface coatings that we tested PEG coatings were the only type that was able to stabilize foam. As the salinity of the aqueous phase increased, the nanoparticle concentration required to maintain foam also increased; for example, 0.5 weight percent nanoparticles were required for 4 weight percent NaCl brine. Foam stability was weakly correlated with volume ratios as foams were made across ratios from two to fourteen, and the normalized viscosity ratio increased with the increase of the phase ratio. Foams were created at temperatures up to 95 degrees Celsius. Foam generation was also determined to require a critical shear rate, which increased with temperature. When foam was stabilized by the nanoparticles, the foam exhibited an increase of between two and twenty times in the resistance of flow compared to the two fluids flowing without nanoparticles.