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Preparation and Performance Evaluation of

Stable Foamy Heavy Oil

Article in Petroleum Chemistry · March 2017

DOI: 10.1134/S0965544117020141

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ISSN 0965-5441, Petroleum Chemistry, 2017, Vol. 57, No. 3, pp. 284–292. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2017.
Published in Russian in Neftekhimiya, 2017, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 226–234.

Preparation and Performance Evaluation of Stable Foamy Heavy Oil1

Jie Sun a, *, Jiaqiang Jinga, b, **, Peiyu Jinga, Ye Lic, Xiaoshuang Chena, and Haili Hu a
aSchool of Oil and Natural Gas Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
b
Oil and Gas Fire Protection Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu 611731, China
c
Chongqing Fengdu Gas Co., Ltd., Chongqing 408200, China
*e-mail: sunj101@163.com
**e-mail: jjq@swpu.edu.cn
Received February 19, 2016

Abstract⎯Cold production and transportation of heavy oil is currently a hotspot issue in petroleum industry.
In this study, an idea that heavy oil is transported in the form of foamy oil at room temperature was proposed.
The effect of foaming agent type and concentration, foam stabilizer type and concentration, oil-water volume
ratio and temperature on the foamy oil performance was explored by using Waring Blender method. A kind
of stable foamy heavy oil was prepared and its property was evaluated from the quality, macro and micro, and
rheology perspectives. The results indicate that the stable foamy oil can be prepared with 2.0 g/L Sodium ben-
zenesulfonat and 1.5 g/L Dodecanol and oil-water volume ratio of 1 : 1 at 20°C and 0.1 MPa. The stable
foamy oil with a quality of about 70% is in the Mitchell quality range of a foaming fluid. The bubble diameter
is normally distributed and the bubbles with a diameter of about 180μm are the most. In the testing range from
20 to 30°C, the foamy oil demonstrates pseudo-plastic behavior, and all the apparent viscosities at 100 1/s are
less than 150 mPa s, and the viscosity reduction rates are more than 99.5%.

Keywords: foamy heavy oil, cold transportation, stability, macro and micro structure, rheological behavior
DOI: 10.1134/S0965544117020141

Heavy oil reservoirs have in the last decade
encountered growing interest in the industry [1]. With
the rapid depletion of the world’s largest light and
medium oil reservoirs, heavier hydrocarbon compo-
nents, remaining in the subsurface and accounting for
a considerable percentage of the oil in place [2, 3], will
play an important role in the future of the ever-grow-
ing world’s energy consumption [4]. However, the
high viscosity and complicated composition make
heavy oil much difficult and expensive to be produced,
transported and refined [5]. Common approaches for
heavy oil transportation mainly include heating, dilu-
tion, drag reducing additives, emulsification, core
annular flow and upgrading [6–9]. But the oil are gen-
erally needed to be wholly treated by using these meth-
ods, and meanwhile they have their respective adapt-
ability and shortage.
In cold heavy oil production, foamy heavy oil often
exhibits such special production behaviors as high oil
production rate, slower production decline rate and
higher primary recovery when compared with conven-
tional heavy oil reservoir [10–13]. Therefore, the
method has attracted wide attention of scholars at
home and abroad for its low cost and high oil recovery
[14–19]. However, almost all related researches for
1 The article is published in the original.
foamy oil are focused on underground production,
rarely involving subsequent process of gathering and
transportation. In oil field, the foamy oil produced is
usually first carried into oil tank for gravity separation,
and then transported to the combination station by
traditional transporting methods aforementioned. In
these processes, high energy consumption always
exists in the separation, high operation costs and a
large amount of light oil or surfactants are required
[8, 20].
Considering the great flowability of foamy oil
which can improve the production performance of
some heavy oil reservoirs, and the broad prospects of
cold heavy oil production, an idea that heavy oil is
transported at normal temperature in the form of
foamy oil was proposed. In this study, stable foamy oil
was prepared based on the synergy of the foaming
agent and foam stabilizer, and its performance was
evaluated, hoping to provide a possibility for the tech-
nology of cold heavy oil transportation in the future.
1. EXPERIMENTAL
1.1. Materials
The heavy crude oil sample, whose basic composi-
tions and physical properties are listed in Table 1, was
collected from Tahe (TH) oilfield in Chinese Xinjiang

284
 PREPARATION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION 285

Table 1. Basic properties and compositions of Tahe crude heavy oil

Viscosity Density at 20°C,
Bound water, wt % Asphaltene, wt % Wax, wt % Resin, wt %
at 50°C, mPa s kg/m3
4450 974.5 0.00 15.31 0.75 31.88

Table 2. Foaming agents used for foamy oil preparation

Surfactant Code HLB value Ionicity Provider
Cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide CATB 16 Cation Shanghai Chemical Reagent Plant
Cetyltrimethylammonium chloride CATC 15.8 Cation Shanghai Chemical Reagent Plant
Sodium benzenesulfonat ABS 10.6 Anion Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
Sodium dodecyl sulfate SDS 40.0 Anion Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
Coconutt Diethanol Amide CDEA 15 Nonionic Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
Octyl phenol ethoxylate OP-10 14.5 Nonionic Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory

district. Moreover, the water used in this study is tap
water, which was from Chengdu water supply com-
pany. According to the company’s water analysis
report, the pH value and salinity are 7.32 and
132 mg/L, respectively.
The foaming volume and foam stability of the
foamy oil were directly influenced by types and con-
centrations of foaming agents and foam stabilizers.
There are four kinds of common foaming agents in
industrial applications, i.e. the anionic, the
cationic, the nonionic and the amphoteric, in which
the amphoteric surfactant is rarely applied for its high
cost. In this paper, two kinds of cationic, anionic and
nonionic surfactants were selected as foaming agents,
and two anionic and three nonionic surfactants were
selected as foam stabilizers, which are shown in Tables
2 and 3 respectively.
1.2. Apparatus
XP-300C image analytical system (Shanghai,
China) was used to capture and analyze foam micro-
graphs. Anton Paar Rheolab QC viscometer (Graz,
Austria) was adopted to test the rheological behaviors
of the foam and the oil. A GJ-1 Homo-mixer with a
maximum stirring rate of 4500 rpm (Jiangyin, China)
was used to prepare foamy oil. A Shangping FA2104S
electronic balance with an accuracy of 1/10000 g
(Shanghai, China) was used to weigh various samples.
A Zhongxing digital thermostatic water bath (Shiji-
azhuang, China) was used as a temperature system for
preparation of foamy oil. Some measuring cylinders
(1000, 100 mL) and pipettes (100 mL) were used to
evaluate the foam performance.
1.3. Methods
1.3.1. Preparation of foamy oil. Based on Waring
Blender method, 50 mL water with some surfactants
and 50 mL heavy oil was added to a stirring cup and
mixed by a glass rod evenly as the foaming fluid. Then
it was stirred by the GJ-1 Homo-mixer for 2 min at
20°C and 4500 rpm to prepare foamy oil. For the poor
flowability, the heavy oil was difficult to be wholly
transferred from the measuring cylinder to the stirring
cup after the volume was measured. Thus when pre-

Table 3. Foam stabilizers used for foamy oil preparation

Surfactant Code Main composition MW Ionicity Provider
Carboxy methyl cellulose CMC Carboxy methyl cellulose 264.204 Anion Chengdu Kelong Chemical
sodium sodium Reagent Factory
Polyacrylamide PAM Polyacrylamide 3 × 108 Anion Chengdu Kelong Chemical
Reagent Factory
Hydroxyethyl Cellulose HEC Hydroxyethyl Cellulose 2.5 × 105 Nonionic Chengdu Kelong Chemical
Reagent Factory
Dodecanol Dod 1-Dodecanol 186 Nonionic Chengdu Kelong Chemical
Reagent Factory
SF-1 suspending agent SF-1 Acrylic polymer – Nonionic Guangzhou Feirui
Chemical Ltd.

PETROLEUM CHEMISTRY Vol. 57 No. 3 2017

286 JIE SUN et al.
Table 4. Performance of 100 ml foaming fluid with different type of foaming agents
Foaming agent
CATC CATB
Parameter
Foaming volume V0, mL 270 255
Half-life t1/2, min 40 21
FCI value, mL min 10800 5355
paring the foaming fluid, we measured the density of
the heavy oil at 20°C and weighed the mass of the oil
in accordance with the required volume.
1.3.2. Performance evaluation of foamy oil. In order
to evaluate the stability of the foam system, the time
for the bubbles coalescing to half of the original vol-
ume is recorded as the half-life t1/2 of the foam [20].
Generally, the foaming volume V0 and half-life t1/2 of
aqueous foam are easy to be tested due to the easily
identified color and interface of the foam and drain-
age. For heavy oil, the foaming volume can be
observed clearly. Meanwhile, the interface of the
foamy oil and drainage can also be identified unex-
pectedly, this could be due to the added surfactants
reducing adhesion of the foamy oil to the inner wall of
measuring cylinder and increasing the lubricity of the
drainage. Based on the performance evaluation
method of aqueous foam and good adaptability for
foamy oil, the foaming volume V0 and half-life t1/2
were used as two indexes for evaluating foamy oil
property. To evaluate the comprehensive influences
on the foamability of foaming fluid, its foam compos-
ite index (FCI) can be calculated by the formula of
FCI = 0.75V0 t1/2 [21], where the units of V0 and t1/2 are
milliliter (ml) and minute (min) separately. The larger
the FCI value, the stronger its comprehensive perfor-
mance. According to calculated FCI values, the com-
prehensive performance of foam system can be divided
into four grades, i.e. superior grade (>15000), good
grade (10000–15000), medium grade (5000–10000),
poor grade (<5000) [22].
The volume fraction of bubbles in foamy oil,
namely foamy oil quality Γ can be calculated by
Eq. (1):
Vg
Γ= × 100% (1)
V g + Vl
where V g and V l are the volume of gas and liquid in the
foamy oil respectively.
2. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
2.1. Composition of Foaming Fluid
2.1.1. Evaluation of type of foaming agents. In the
experiments, parts of the selected foaming agents
exhibited lower comprehensive performances at
higher concentrations. Thus the foamy oil with each
OP-10 CDEA ABS SDS
122 100 362 385
– – 130 119
– – 35295 34361
foaming agent concentration of 1.5 g/L and oil-water
volume ratio of 1 : 1 at 20°C was preliminarily pre-
pared. The effects of different types of foaming agents
on foaming capacity of 100 mL foaming fluid are
shown in Table 4.
Both nonionic surfactants, OP-10 and CDEA,
show poor foaming capacity, the foaming volumes are
small and the bubbles have an uneven distribution.
The foaming volumes of the foamy oils with CATB
and CATC can reach 275 and 250 mL respectively, but
the half-lives and FCI values are short and small. SDS
and ABS have a good compatibility with TH heavy oil,
both of the foaming volumes are more than 360 mL
and the produced foamy oils demonstrate dispersive
spherical bubbles. What’s more, the drainage hardly
adheres to the wall of the measuring cylinder after
experiments and the two anionic surfactants show
good lubricating effects.
Under the same condition, SDS shows a little
larger foaming volume than ABS, but ABS presents a
longer half-life and bigger FCI value, which indicates
that the foamy oil with ABS is probably more stable
than that prepared with SDS. Therefore, ABS is used
as the foaming agent in the following experiments.
2.1.2. Effect of foaming agent concentration. The
effect of ABS concentration on foamy oil performance
was investigated with oil-water volume ratio of 1 : 1 at
20°C.
As shown in Fig. 1, with the increase of ABS con-
centration, the foaming volume increases at first and
then levels off. While the half-life and FCI value
increase to the maximum at 2.0 g/L and then rapidly
decrease. The reason may be that when the concentra-
tion of the additive surfactant is less than that of the
critical micelle concentration (CMC), the
adsorbing amount of the surfactant in air bubble film
is also low. As the foaming agent increases, the adsorb-
ing amount increases and the surface tension will be
reduced, which eventually results in an enhancement
in foaming capacity and foam stability of the foaming
fluid. When the surfactant concentration continues to
increase, the adsorption reaches saturation and the
surface tension cannot be further reduced, the foam-
ing volume almost remains unchanged. But when the
surfactant concentration is too high, the liquid content
in bubble film decreases, the “fragility” of foam
increases and the Marangoni effect gradually weakens,
finally resulting in reduced foam stability. Therefore,
PETROLEUM CHEMISTRY Vol. 57 No. 3 2017
 PREPARATION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION 287

Foaming volume/half-life 500 Foaming 60000 action mechanism of these two foam stabilizers is to
volume improve the stability of the bubble by increasing the
400 Half-life 50000 viscosity of the liquid film. But the effects are not
FCI value
40000 obvious because the liquid film viscosity has been high
(mL, min)

300
200
100
0 0
0.5
ABS concentration
Fig. 1. Effect of foaming agent concentration on foamy oil
performance.
the concentration of ABS for preparing foamy oil in
the following experiments is determined as 2.0 g/L.
2.1.3. Evaluation of type of foam stabilizers. The
foaming fluid with foam stabilizer concentration of
2.0 g/L was prepared by Waring Blender method. The
effect of different types of foam stabilizers on foamy oil
performance are shown in Fig. 2.
High viscosity of heavy oil itself can enhance the
film strength of the bubbles in foamy oil. The addition
of different types of foam stabilizers often leads to
electrostatic attraction or repulsion, chemical and
physical interactions between the heavy oil, foaming
agent and foam stabilizer.
As can be seen in Fig. 2, all the foaming volumes
reduce after the addition of five foam stabilizers in the
foaming fluid. The main reason may be that the addi-
tive foam stabilizers limit the free movement of the
foaming agent molecules to some extent. The tackify-
ing stabilizers (CMC and PAM), instead of increasing
the stability of the foamy oil, make the half-lives and
FCI values greatly reduce. This is mostly likely that the
FCI value
enough, and the compatibility between the foaming
30000 agents and TH oil is poor. In addition, adding HEC
and SF-1 also cannot improve foamy oil stability
20000 effectively. Amazingly, the half-life of the foamy oil
10000 with Dod can increase to 500 min and the FCI value
can reach more than 100000 (superior grade). There-
fore, Dod is used as the foam stabilizer in follow-up
1.0 1.5 2.0 3.0 study.
2.1.4. Effect of foam stabilizer concentration. The
Dod concentration required for stable foamy oil was
investigated with ABS concentration of 2.0 g/L and
oil-water volume ratio of 1 : 1 at 20°C. As shown in
Fig. 3, with the increase of Dod concentration, the
foaming volume continues to reduce, and the half-life
and FCI value increase at first and then decrease. The
reason may probably lie in that, at low concentration
of Dod, the interaction of Dod with the oil and foam-
ing agent improved the arrangement of active mole-
cules in liquid film. But when the concentration is too
high, some stable micelles can easily form in the inter-
nal of the foamy oil, which will weaken the self-recov-
ering ability of bubble film. This is to say when the
bubble film is deformed, but the active molecules are
bound in micelles, and cannot move to the deforma-
tion place to repair the bubble film, which ultimately
results in the decrease of the foam oil stability. Com-
paratively speaking, the foamy oil shows a better sta-
bility at Dod concentration of 1.5 g/L.
2.1.5. Effect of oil-water volume ratio. Figure 4
shows the effect of oil-water ratio on foaming volume,
half-life and FCI value of 100 mL foaming fluid at
20°C. The foaming volume increases with the
decrease of oil-water ratios at first and then has a
decreasing trend. This can be attributed to that high
water content makes both the viscosity of foaming

600 120000

Foaming volume
Foaming volume/half-life

500 100000
Half-life
FCI value

400 FCI value 80000

(mL, min)

300 60000

200 40000

100 20000

0 0
Blank Dod SF-1 HEC CMC PAM
Dod concentration

Fig. 2. Performance of 100 mL foaming fluid with different type of foam stabilizers.

PETROLEUM CHEMISTRY Vol. 57 No. 3 2017

288 JIE SUN et al.

Foaming volume Foaming volume

700 Half-life 140000 700 Half-life 140000
FCI value FCI value
Foaming volume/half-life

Foaming volume/half-life
600 120000 600 120000
500 100000 500 100000

FCI value
(mL, min)

FCI value

(mL, min)
400 80000 400 80000
300 60000 300 60000
200 40000 200 40000
100 20000 100 20000
0 0 0 0
0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 3.0 7:3 6:4 5:5 4:6 3:7
Dod concentration Oil-water volume ratio

Fig. 3. Effect of foam stabilizer concentration on foamy oil Fig. 4. Effect of oil-water volume ratio on foamy oil perfor-
performance. mance.

fluid and the energy required for preparing foamy oil
decrease, thus the foaming volume will inevitably
increase when same mechanical energy is introduced.
However, too much water volume will in turn reduce
the viscosity the foamy oil and make the bubble film
easily rupture, thereby preventing the foaming volume
continue to increase.
What’s more, with oil-water ratio decreasing, the
half-life continuously decreases, and the FCI value
increases at first and then decreases. The FCI value
reaches the maximum at oil-water ratio of 5 : 5. Based
on the foregoing analysis, the foamy oil prepared with
2.0 g/L ABS, 1.5 g/L Dod at 1 : 1 oil-water volume
ratio shows the best stability. In addition, the crude oil
is often produced with a large amount of water (pro-
duced water contents of some wells even exceed 70%)
at the late stage production of many oilfields, which
provides favorable conditions for the field application
of heavy oil transported in the form of foamy oil.
2.1.6. Effect of temperature. Figure 5 shows the
effect of temperatures on the foamy oil performance.
We can find that the foaming volume has a slight
increase with the increase of temperature. This is
because high temperature reduces the oil viscosity
along with the energy to foam the oil.
perature is also necessary to be explored and 30°C can
be considered as the optimal in this study based on the
above-mentioned analysis.
2.2. Foamy Oil Property
2.2.1. Foamy oil quality. Blauer et al. first divided
the foam fluid into three regions based on foam qual-
ity, i.e. dispersion region (0–0.52), interference
(0.52–0.74) and deformation (0.74–1.00) [23]. After-
wards, he found the Mitchell quality range existed
between 0.5236 and 0.9999 and preferably 0.60 to 0.85,
in which the foam is a homogenous mixture with uni-
form bubble sizes and could be stable for several
hours [24].
Foamy oil qualities under different conditions were
calculated and shown in Table 5. The anionic surfac-
tants (ABS and SDS) show the optimal foaming
capacity, and followed by the cationic surfactants
(CATC and CATB), the nonionic surfactants (OP-10
700 120000
Foaming volume
Foaming volume/half-life

600 Half-life 100000

The stability of the foamy oil is greatly influenced FCI value
by temperature. The half-life and FCI value continu- 500
FCI value

80000
(mL, min)

ally decrease with the increase of temperature. The 400

main reason may be that, on the one hand, the 60000
increase of temperature makes the spaces between 300
molecules of the foaming fluid increased and molecu- 40000
lar motion enhanced, which ultimately results in the 200
weakening of intermolecular forces and dispersive 100 20000
arrangement of surfactant molecules. On the other
hand, as temperature increases, the viscosity of foam- 0 0
ing solution decreases, which further accelerates the 20 30 40 50 60
drainage rate of the bubble film. For foamy oil, the Temperature
higher the temperature, the better the mobility, but the
worse the stability. Therefore, an appropriate tem- Fig. 5. Effect of temperature on foamy oil performance.

PETROLEUM CHEMISTRY Vol. 57 No. 3 2017

 PREPARATION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION 289

Table 5. Foamy oil quality under different conditions

Foaming agent, 1.5 g/L CATC CATB OP-10 CDEA ABS SDS
Foamy oil quality Г, % 63.0 60.8 18.0 0.0 72.4 74.0
ABS concentration, g/L 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 3.0 —
Foamy oil quality Г, % 23.1 64.9 72.4 74.0 75.0 —
Dod concentration, g/L Blank 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 —
Foamy oil quality Г, % 74.0 68.3 64.9 61.5 57.4 —
Oil-water volume ratio 7:3 6:4 5:5 4:6 3:7 —
Foamy oil quality Г, % 48.7 63.6 68.3 69.7 66.7 —
Temperature, °C 20 30 40 50 60 —
Foamy oil quality Г, % 68.3 74.1 71.8 73.3 72 .6 —

and CDEA) show the worst. With the increase of ABS spherical bubbles are air and water and the black parts
concentration, the foamy oil quality exceeds 60% at are heavy oil drops. Two-dimensional diameters and
1.0 g/L and then levels off. The addition of the foam areas of the bubbles in pictures were collected by using
stabilizer makes the quality of the foamy oil decrease, the MiVnt image analysis system.
and the higher the foam stabilizer concentration, the The bubbles in foamy oil are in fact three-dimen-
lower the foamy oil quality. What’s more, as the oil- sional spheres. Therefore, the equivalent three-
water ratio decreases, the foaming volume increases dimensional diameters can be calculated on the basis
gradually. Moreover, the temperature has little effect of the collected two-dimensional bubble diameters,
on the foamy oil quality. and the overall sizes of the bubbles in foamy oil can be
2.2.2. Macroprofile. The gas phase of the newly- evaluated as below:
prepared foamy oil with 2.0 g/L ABS and 1.5 g/L Dod 1
and oil-water volume ratio of 1 : 1 at 20°C is in form of
d b = ⎛⎜ b ⎞⎟ ,
6V 3
a large amount of uniform tiny bubbles. After standing (2)
for 1 hour, a layer of oil slick appeared on the top of the ⎝ π ⎠
foamy oil, which could suppress the diffusion of the V b = A b h, (3)
bubbles into the air to a certain extent. 10 hours later,
the volume of the foamy oil greatly reduced, and the where db is equivalent three-dimensional diameter of a
upper part changed to dry bubbles. This is due to that single bubble (μm), Vb is bubble volume (μm3), Ab is
the foams in the oil constantly decay as the standing two-dimensional area of a single bubble (μm2), h is
time increases, the bubbles are gradually deformed thickness of the flow channel in observation window.
from spherical into hexahedral shapes, and finally The equivalent three-dimensional average diame-
coexist with the high viscous oil phase which is in the ter of a single bubble can be obtained using the volume
form of “skeleton” structures. The “skeleton” struc- weighted average method as following:
ture can maintain for a long time, but most of the Nb
internal liquid phase has been lost, thus the fluid at
this time is not the true sense of the foamy oil. db = ∑S gi d bi , (4)
i =1
Table 6 reflects the change laws of the foaming vol-
ume and half-life of foamy oil with different surfac- V bi
tants over time. When only ABS was added, the foam- S gi = Nb
, (5)
ing volume of 100 mL foamy oil remained stable for
about 300 min and then sharply decreased. While the
∑V bi
i =1
drainage volume rapidly increased to 50 mL at 193
min. After addition of Dod, the initial foaming volume where d b is equivalent three-dimensional average
decreased a bit but the reduction rate became much diameter of a single bubble, Nb is total number of
smaller. In addition, the half-life is more than two the bubble samples, Sgi is weighting coefficient of the
times longer than that of the foamy oil without foam i-bubble.
stabilizer. The equivalent three-dimensional average diame-
2.2.3. Microstructure. The microstructures of the ter is obtained as 227.7 μm by Eq. (4). The bubble
foamy oil were captured by XP-300C image analytical diameters are basically between 60 and 300 μm,
system, and the micrographs in different vision fields and the bubbles with a diameter of about 180 μm are
are shown in Fig. 6. Based on the different light trans- the most, while the probability of occurrence are the
mittance, it can be deduced that the white dispersive highest.

PETROLEUM CHEMISTRY Vol. 57 No. 3 2017

290 JIE SUN et al.

Table 6. The change of foaming volume and drainage volume versus time
Foaming volume, mL Drainage volume, mL Drainage volume, mL
Time, min Time, min Time, min
oil + ABS oil + ABS + Dod oil + ABS oil + ABS + Dod
0 385 315 0 0 0 0
50 383 311 50 29 50 25
100 380 308 100 43 100 34
150 378 305 150 45 150 38
200 372 303 160 47 200 40
250 355 301 170 48 250 41
300 295 299 180 49 300 44
350 167 296 190 49 350 45
400 138 293 193 50 400 46
450 112 270 420 47
500 103 236 440 48
550 94 217 460 49
600 88 191 467 50

At present, the decay mechanism of foam fluid is
generally believed to lie in two aspects: the liquid film
drainage and the diffusion of gas through liquid film
[25]. The pressure in small bubble is higher than that
in large bubble, which will make the gas in small bub-
bles diffuse to large ones until the small bubbles disap-
pear, and large bubbles continue to expand and rup-
ture. Therefore, the more uniform the bubble size dis-
tribution in foamy oil, the lower degree the bubble
diffusion occurs, and then the longer the life of the
bubble and the more stable the foamy oil. The bubbles
in foamy oil are in normal distribution, which shows
the bubble size distribution is narrow. The bubble size
is relatively uniform and the diffusion rate between
bubbles is slow. This may also be one of internal fac-
tors for the good stability of the foamy oil prepared in
this study.
2.2.4. Rheological behavior. The rheological curves
of the foamy oil were measured under the shear rate
range from 0 to 100 1/s at 20–35°C, which shows the
rheological behavior of a non–Newtonian fluid. As
shown in Table 7, when the temperature is between 20
and 30°C, the curves can be well described by power
law mode, and all the correlation coefficients are more
than 0.99. But when the temperature reaches 35°C,
the correlation coefficient R2 is only 0.9628. It may be
that the stability of the foamy oil decreases with
increase of temperature, and rotation of the rotor in
rheometer accelerates drainage of foam films.
The apparent viscosities at 100 1/s calculated
according to the obtained fitted rheological equations
are less than 150 mPa s. While all the apparent viscos-
ities basically decreases with the increase of tempera-
ture. In addition, all the viscosity reduction rates of the
foamy oil are more than 99.5%.
The internal friction from relative motion of liquid
layers and the collision and extrusion between dis-
persed bubbles contribute much to the viscosity
increase of foamy oil. Studies have also shown that
bubbles could be elongated and gradually tend to be
neatly arranged after the foamy oil being sheared,
which could reduce the probability of bubbles collid-

100 µm 100 µm 100 µm

(a) Vision field 1 (b) Vision field 2 (c) Vision field 3

Fig. 6. Microstructures of the foamy oil at 20°C.

PETROLEUM CHEMISTRY Vol. 57 No. 3 2017

 PREPARATION AND PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
Table 7. Fitting results of rheological curves of the foamy oil
Power law model
Temperature, °C
rheological equation R2
20 τ = 6.7346γ 0.1670 0.9944
25 τ = 4.0748γ 0.2545 0.9919
30 τ = 3.4894 γ 0.1955 0.9915
35 τ = 1.4580γ 0.3891 0.9628
ing with each other and then reduce the apparent vis-
cosity [26]. Future work requires greater insight into
the resistance characteristic of the foamy oil flow in a
pipe and drag reduction of the method that heavy oil is
transported in the form of foamy oil.
3. CONCLUSIONS
The effect of different type and concentration of
surfactants, oil-water volume ratio and temperature
on the foamability and foam stability of a foaming
fluid was investigated by using Waring Blender
method. A kind of foamy oil with high stability was
screened out, and its performance was evaluated from
macro and micro perspectives. Based on the findings
presented in this study, the following can be con-
cluded:
(1) Based on the synergy of foaming agents and
foam stabilizers, a kind of stable foamy oil can be pre-
pared with 2.0 g/L ABS and 1.5 g/L Dod and oil-water
volume ratio of 1 : 1 at 20°C and 0.1 MPa. The foam-
ing volume and half-life of a 100 mL foaming fluid can
reach 315 mL and 472 min respectively.
(2) The quality of the stable foamy oil basically
maintains at about 70%, which is in the Mitchell qual-
ity range of a foam fluid. In addition, the foamy oil
demonstrates dispersive spherical bubbles, and the
bubble size distribution is mainly maintained at about
180 μm.
(3) The foamy oil shows pseudo-plastic behavior at
20–30°C, and the apparent viscosities decreases with
the increase of temperature. Within the whole tem-
perature testing range from 20 to 35°C, all the appar-
ent viscosities at 100 1/s are less than 150 mPa s, and
the viscosity reduction rates are more than 99.5%.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the National Natural
Science foundation of China (Grant no. 51074136)
PETROLEUM CHEMISTRY Vol. 57 No. 3 2017
291
Apparent viscosity Viscosity
at 100 1/s, mPa s reduction rate, %
145.32 99.83
131.56 99.75
85.85 99.74
87.49 99.56
and Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of
Higher Education of China (Grant
no. 20115121110004) and Science and Technology
Project of Sichuan Province (Grant no. 2015JY0099).
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