Hirasaki, George JBiswal, Sibani Lisa2023-08-092023-052023-04-17May 2023Bai, Chutian. "Fundamental Insights of Foam Transport in Porous Media Applied to Enhanced Oil Recovery." (2023) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/115151">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/115151</a>.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/115151Foams are colloidal systems that consist of gas bubbles dispersed in a liquid. Porous media, such as rocks or soil, have complex pore structures that can trap and hold fluids, including foam. Foam can exhibit unexpected behavior while flowing through porous media, leading to ambiguous or contradictory experimental results. The transport of aqueous foam in porous media has become an increasingly popular subject of research lately. A strong motivation to comprehend the fundamental physical and chemical processes that accurately describe and predict the nature of foam flow in porous media is that there are many potential applications, such as enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and carbon dioxide storage. Determining the capillary pressure during foam flow in porous media is important because bubbles are thought to coalesce by lamella rupture as the "limiting capillary pressure" is approached. In this thesis, the roles of surfactant concentration, liquid and gas flowrate, system pressure, temperature, and gas type on capillary pressure and apparent viscosity of foam flowing through porous media are explored. Furthermore, a novel probe design for directly measuring the in-situ capillary pressure is proposed. An application of foam EOR is demonstrated in this thesis as well.application/pdfengCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.FoamPorous MediaCapillary PressureEORThesis2023-08-09