Experimental investigation of CO2 foam flooding-enhanced oil recovery in fractured low-permeability reservoirs: Core-scale to pore-scale

Fractured low-permeability reservoirs are characterized by poor reservoir physical properties, strong interlayer heterogeneity and the existence of natural and artificial fractures, resulting in significant water or gas channeling during flooding development. CO2 foam can effectively control the mobility of CO2 and ensure a more stable flooding front. In this study, taking into account the imbibition effect of the flooding process, the flooding performance under different injection methods and the influencing factors of foam pre-injection volume, back pressure and fracture complexity on CO2 foam flooding were systematically analyzed using fractured lowpermeability core flooding experiments. In addition, the mechanism of CO2 foam flooding enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in low-permeability fractured reservoirs was obtained in combination with microscopic flooding experiments. The results show that the maximum recovery of 59.36 % can be obtained by soaking the core samples for 12 h with pre-injection of 0.4 PV CO2 foam followed by CO2 foam flooding, which adequately considers the imbibition effect during the flooding process. The pressure difference and oil recovery increases with increasing foam pre-injection amount, and the oil recovery with back pressure (2 MPa and 4 MPa) is significantly higher than that without back pressure; however, a further increase in back pressure has less impact on the recovery. The oil recovery rate of the fracture-free core is lower than that of the multiple fracture core during CO2 foam flooding but higher than that of the single fracture core, and the fracture complexity of the fractured cores has less impact on the final oil recovery. Microscopic experiments show that CO2 foam can effectively prevent channeling and improve the sweep efficiency. Soaking during the CO2 foam flooding process makes foam enter the matrix through the fracture, and CO2 dissolves after the foam breaks to increase the mobility of the crude oil, while the surfactant solution emulsifies the crude oil and changes the rock wettability. The unbroken foam can increase the sweep range, and the crude oil that flows into the fracture is carried by the subsequent injected foam to be recovered as foamy oil.