
Mapping local foam mobility in porous media from computed tomography data
Recovering apparent viscosity and foam texture fields from coreflooding experiments is challenging, even with modern computed tomography (CT) scan equipment. In this work, we present an explicit expression for efficiently calculating the effective foam viscosity and propose an improved procedure for processing CT scan images to obtain accurate water-saturation profiles. Using these techniques, we processed CT scan data from a coreflooding experiment, showing that the increase in effective foam viscosity due to foam generation occurs early during injection, before breakthrough. The rapid increase in apparent viscosity is due to foam formation before breakthrough. After the breakthrough, the foam texture reaches its maximum, and the effective foam viscosity increases logarithmically over time as the foamed gas sweeps out the water phase. The pressure drop obtained using the effective foam viscosity showed good agreement with the experimental values before breakthrough. The workflow proposed here could be readily adapted to other foam models, provided reasonable estimates for these new quantities can be determined from experiments.
Grigori Chapiro

