Special Issue: Fractals in Unconventional Reservoirs — Part II; ArticleOpen Access

INVESTIGATION OF DYNAMIC TEXTURE AND FLOW CHARACTERISTICS OF FOAM TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA BASED ON FRACTAL THEORY

Faculty of Electromechanical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266061, Shandong, P. R. China

Geo-Energy Research Institute, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266100, Shandong, P. R. China

E-mail Address: wangfeiupc@163.com

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HAIFENG LI

College of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao 266580, Shandong, P. R. China

E-mail Address: lihai421@163.com

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DONGXING DU

Faculty of Electromechanical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266061, Shandong, P. R. China

Geo-Energy Research Institute, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266100, Shandong, P. R. China

E-mail Address: du-dongxing@qust.edu.cn

Corresponding author.

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, and

XU DONG

Faculty of Electromechanical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266061, Shandong, P. R. China

Geo-Energy Research Institute, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266100, Shandong, P. R. China

E-mail Address: dongxu985@gmail.com

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218348X19400139Cited by:7 (Source: Crossref)

This article is part of the issue:

Special Issue: Fractals in Unconventional Reservoirs — Part II

Abstract

Foam fluid has found wide applications in oilfield development, such as profile control, water plugging, gas channeling control, fracturing, and so on. As a non-Newtonian fluid, the successful application of foam is significantly influenced by its structure. The foam texture, however, is complex and irregular, and becomes even more complicated in porous media by the boundary effects. Therefore, the description of dynamic foam structure is crucial and a quantitative description method for foam fluid is worth exploring. In this paper, the fractal characteristics of foam in porous media are verified and combined with foam microdisplacement experiment, and the fractal rule of foam is found. The relationship between fractal dimension and pressure is also discussed. The results show that foam has dynamic fractal characteristics during transport in porous media and the box-counting fractal dimension ranges from 1 to 2. Furthermore, the dynamic change of foam fractal dimension during transport in porous media could be divided into three stages. In the first stage when no foam forms, the fractal dimension is about 2; in the second unsteady foam stage, the fractal dimension is reduced from 1.9 to 1.6; the last one is the steady stage and the fractal dimension is almost constant (about 1.6). Besides, the fractal dimension of foam fluid is closely related to displacement pressure. Low pressure corresponds to higher fractal dimension, and high pressure corresponds to lower fractal dimension. Pressure is negatively linearly correlated with fractal dimension. These results are expected to enrich the understanding of the foam dynamic characteristics in their advanced applications.

Keywords:

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Vol. 27, No. 01

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Received 12 November 2018

Accepted 19 December 2018

Published: January 9, 2019

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This is an Open Access article published by World Scientific Publishing Company. It is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY) License. Further distribution of this work is permitted, provided the original work is properly cited.

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INVESTIGATION OF DYNAMIC TEXTURE AND FLOW CHARACTERISTICS OF FOAM TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA BASED ON FRACTAL THEORY

Abstract

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