Stability study of aqueous foams under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions relevant to Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS)

In Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) hydraulic fracturing is carried out by injecting cold water into deep Hot Dry Rocks (HDR) under carefully controlled conditions to create new or reopen existing fractures. Water-based fracturing fluids demonstrate some challenges including immense quantity of water usage, water sensitivity of the formations, water blocking, and lack of proppant carrying capacity and transportation. Thus, an alternative is to use foam-based fracturing fluid which offers potential advantage over conventional water-based fracturing fluid such as minimum water usage, reduced wellbore damage, high proppant carrying capacity, and less environmental damage. However, foams are complex mixture of gaseous phase and liquid phase which are thermodynamically unstable at downhole conditions, and their stability can decrease over time due to liquid drainage, bubble coarsening, and coalescence. This paper shows laboratory experiments executed to study foam stability at high temperature (200 degrees C) and high pressure (6.9 MPa) conditions which simulates the geothermal environment. Foam stability was characterized by half-life of foam, which is defined as the time taken by the foam to decreases by 50% of its original height due to drainage. In this paper, two types of gaseous phases, nitrogen (N2) and carbon dioxide (CO2) were investigated. Also, based on successful practice of foam-based fracturing fluid in oil and gas industries, four surfactants, including Alpha olefin sulfonate (AOS), Sodium dodecyl sulfonate (SDS), TergitolTM (NP - 40), and Cetyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTAC) at optimum concentration of 1 wt.% were tested for best stability performance. In addition, different stabilizing agents including guar gum, bentonite clay, crosslinker, silicon dioxide nanoparticles (SiO2), graphene oxide (GO) were also studied. Experimental results showed that N2 foams were more stable than CO2 foams. It was observed that foam half-life decreased with the increase in temperature. Among all the surfactants, AOS foams showed the most promising thermal stability at high temperatures. Moreover, with the addition of stabilizing agents, foam's half-life was enhanced. Stabilizing agents such as crosslinker and GO dispersion showed the most stable foams with half-life recorded at 20 min and 17 min, respectively, at 200 degrees C and 6.9 MPa. Finally, pressure also showed a positive effect on foam stability; with increased pressure, foam half-life was increased. Based on the experimental data, analytical models for the effect of temperature and pressure were developed, considering foam degradation is a first-order kinetic reaction that linearly depends on the foam drainage mechanism. The effect of temperature on foam half-life was studied as an exponential decay model. In this model, foam half-life is a function of drainage rate constant (DA) and activation energy (Ea) of the foam system. The effect of pressure on foam half-life was found to obey a power-law model where an increase in pressure showed an increase in foam half-life. Furthermore, a linear relation was studied for the effect of pressure on foam activation energy and drainage rate. Then the combined effects of temperature and pressure were studied, which yielded an analytical model to predict the foam stabilities in terms of half-life for different foam compositions. This research indicates that with an appropriate selection of surfactants and stabilizing agents, it is possible to obtain stable foams, which could replace conventional water fracturing fluid under EGS conditions.