Most of the high permeability reservoirs in the Daqing Oil Field have been conducted by water flooding and polymer flooding. Further development of such mature reservoirs has become a big challenge due to highly dispersed residual oil. Foam flooding, as a candidate enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique, has been proposed. In this article, EOR evaluation of CO₂ foam flooding after polymer flooding has been conducted on homogeneous sandpack cores flooding tests at the reservoirs condition. Results indicated that CO₂ foam flooding could enhance considerable oil recovery, even if the oil recovery occurs after polymer flooding. It was also found that higher quality foam with higher pressure gradient could improve larger swept volume and, thus, recovered more residual oil than lower quality foam did. The influence of both the injection strategy and solubility of CO₂ in brine on EOR of CO₂ foam flooding was also studied.

Particles-stabilized foams have received more attention in recent years due to their specific characteristics and advantages in contrast to conventional foams which were stabilized with surfactants. However, the rheology of particles-stabilized foam in consolidated cores was rarely studied. To investigate the feasibility of the particles-stabilized foam application in enhanced oil recovery, the blocking ability and flowing characteristics of foam stabilized with clay particles were investigated by using experimental cores. To do this, the foam resistance factor was studied as an index in this article. The effects of foam quality (gas velocity divided by total velocity), injection rate of foam, and the permeability of cores on the blocking ability of foams were investigated. Results showed that the blocking ability reached the peak value at the foam quality of 0.74. This indicated effective blocking ability as conventional foams performed in porous media. Moreover, the foams block the channels more effectively in high permeability cores, compared with low permeability ones. Finally, foams displayed shear-thinning property in porous media as injection rate increased.

For mature oil fields, foam flooding is an attractive chemical EOR technique and many pilot tests have been carried out in China. The performance of foam flooding pilot tests and its affect factors on oil recovery was discussed in this paper. The development trend and key technologies of foam flooding technique are pointed out. Eighteen foam flooding pilot tests have been carried out in China from 1994 to 2010. Good performance have achieved in sixteen pilot tests. Through effects analysis of the pilot tests, three main aspects are concluded for affecting the performance of foam flooding tests. First, the characteristics of target reservoirs influence effects of foam flooding tests. The performance of foam flooding in higher oil viscous reservoirs is better than that in light oil reservoirs. The reservoir temperature and formation water salinity also influences the effects of foam flooding. Secondly, the chemical formula of foam solution and the size of slug influence the performance of foam flooding. The stability of foam formula influences the effects of foam flooding greatly. With the same amount of surfactant solution, the effect of high concentration small-sized slug is better than that in low concentration large-sized slug. Last, the injection method and gas liquid ratio can directly influence the foam performance in the reservoir, gas and liquid mixing injecting model is better than surfactant solution-alternation-gas (SAG) injection, and reasonable gas liquid ratio is important for guarantee good effects of foam flood. At present, the trend of foam flooding in China is from nitrogen foam flooding and natural gas foam flooding to air foam flooding. The key technologies of foam flooding are the development of high stable foam formula with oil tolerance, salt and temperature resistance, good injection method and reasonable injection parameter etc.

The extensional viscoelasticity modulus and conductivity of liquid films and stability of bulk foams were investigated respectively. The effects of sinusoidal exciting frequency, polymer type, and polymer concentration on liquid film viscoelasticity modulus were systematically discussed. Higher film viscoelasticity modulus could be assigned for FS01/MPAM film systems than for FS01/HPAM ones. The film conductivity result showed that FS01/HPAM or FS01/MPAM liquid film systems could delay the liquid drainage speed under dynamic conditions compared with FS01 ones. Bulk foam test based on Waring Blender method indicated that FS01/HPAM foam was more stable than FS01/MPAM. Compared with static bulk foam test, the extensional viscoelasticity and conductivity method could reflect the dynamic behavior of liquid films.