Nucleation phenomenon in vertical flow of foamy oils

Abstract

A fluid called Foamy Oil is defined as a continuous liquid phase with a high content of dissolved gas remaining in conditions where a gas associated with a conventional liquid would flow as separate phase. The analysis of this phenomenon in the industry has had a remarkable development based on heavy oil reservoirs because some reservoirs characterized as gas in solution mechanism type had a higher recovery factor than could be predicted for conventional reservoirs. This paper presents a numerical model to determine the behavior of nucleation phenomena considering its properties, especially the gas solubility because this redefines the bubble pressure value obtained conventionally,
since this sets the threshold at which the gas is redistributed in system, and the limits are defined according to the gas velocity in the liquid phase, for which a function of frequency probability distribution is proposed to define the bubble size distribution in the system and a limit through the forces balance obtained in a gas bubble, which marks the phases separation. The function obtained by this balance can modify the solubility of the gas in the liquid, thereby defining a gas content system conditions from the most probable value of bubble diameter separating which establishes a new approach to a function that helps to define the gas bubbles nucleation phenomenon in a foamy oil flow system in vertical flow.