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JIEC 3054 No. of Pages 10

Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry xxx (2016) xxxxxx

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Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry

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Pipeline transport of heavy crudes as stable foamy oil

Jie Suna , Jiaqiang Jinga,b,* , Cheng Wua , Fei Xiaoa , Xiaoxuan Luoa
a
School of Oil & Natural Gas Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
b
Oil & Gas Fire Protection Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu 611731, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Article history:
Received 15 June 2016 A new idea was proposed to transport heavy crudes as foamy oil at normal temperature. The effects of
Received in revised form 18 August 2016 foaming agent type and concentration, foam stabilizer type and concentration, oilwater volume ratio
Accepted 20 August 2016 and temperature on the formation and stability of foamy oil were evaluated. The foamy oil properties and
Available online xxx drag characteristics of foamy oil ow in small diameter pipes were investigated. The results indicate that
the prepared stable foamy oil could be characterized as non-Newtonian power law uid. The predicted
Keywords: pressure drops were in good agreement with the measured ones. The signicant dynamic viscosity
Foamy heavy oil reduction rates were obtained.
Cold transportation
2016 The Korean Society of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights
Stability
reserved.
Drag characteristics
Viscosity reduction

Introduction
The steady increase in global demand for oil and the depletion
of conventional oil reserves has created a transition from
conventional to non-conventional oil [1,2]. In this environment,
heavy oil and oil sands are expected to become a major source of
energy and could potentially extend the worlds energy reserves by
15 years [3] if they can be recovered and transformed into nal
products at a rate and price competitive with other energy sources
[4]. However, the high viscosity and complicated composition
make heavy oil much difcult and expensive to be produced,
transported and rened [5].
In recent years, because of the high cost of heavy oil thermal
recovery technology [610], cold heavy oil production technology
has been successfully applied in eld and has achieved a good
development effect [1113]. Among the non-thermal recovery
techniques, solution-gas drive is one of the most efcient ways
[14]. This method involves simultaneous-mixture ow of gas as
very tiny bubbles entrained in heavy oil, which was later dened as
foamy oil ow [14]. Several heavy oil reservoirs in the west Canada
[15], Venezuela [16], China [17] and Oman [18] under solution gas
drive have shown high oil production rates, slower production
decline rates and higher primary recovery due to the formation of
foamy heavy oil [14,1921].
Many efforts have been made on this promising heavy oil
production method for its low cost and high oil recovery [2430].
However, almost all related researches for foamy oil focus on
underground parts, rarely involving subsequent process of above-
ground gathering and transportation. Common approaches for
heavy oil transportation mainly include heating, dilution, emulsi-
cation and upgrading [3134]. But the oil are generally needed to
be wholly treated, and meanwhile they have their respective
adaptability and shortage. High energy consumption always
follows the heating or upgrading method, and a large amount of
light oil or diluent is generally required for the blending method,
and low transport efciency and large treatment volume of waste
water have hindered the popularization and application of the
emulsication method [33,35].
Considering the great owability of foamy oil which have
improved the production performance of heavy oil reservoirs, and
the broad prospects of cold heavy oil production, an idea that
heavy oil is transported in the form of foamy oil at normal
temperature was proposed. In this study, the factors affecting the
formation and stability of the foamy oil were evaluated based on
the synergy of the foaming agent and foam stabilizer, the
properties of foamy oil and the drag characteristics of foamy oil
pipe ow were experimentally investigated, hoping to provide a
possibility for the new technology of cold heavy oil transportation
in the future.

* Corresponding author at: Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500,

China. Fax: +86 28 83032828.
E-mail addresses: sunj101@163.com (J. Sun), jjq@swpu.edu.cn (J. Jing).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jiec.2016.08.019
1226-086X/ 2016 The Korean Society of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: J. Sun, et al., Pipeline transport of heavy crudes as stable foamy oil, J. Ind. Eng. Chem. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.jiec.2016.08.019
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Materials and methods
Materials
The heavy crude oil sample, whose basic compositions and
physical properties are listed in Table 1, was collected from J7 well
area in Xinjiang oileld in China. Nitrogen (N2), which is a colorless,
odorless, tasteless, nontoxic, noncorrosive and nonammable inert
gas at ambient temperature and pressure, was used to prepare
foamy oil in this study. Moreover, the water used is tap water,
which was from Chengdu water supply company. According to the
companys water analysis report, the pH value and salinity are
7.32 and 132 mg/l, respectively.
The foaming volume and foam stability of the foamy oil were
directly inuenced by the type and concentration of foaming agent
and foam stabilizer. There are four kinds of common foaming
agents in industrial applications, i.e. the anionic, the cationic, the
nonionic and the amphoteric, in which the amphoteric surfactant
is rarely applied for its high cost. In this paper, two kinds of
cationic, anionic and nonionic surfactants were selected as
foaming agents, and two kinds of anionic and three kinds of
nonionic surfactants were selected as foam stabilizers, which are
shown in Tables 2 and 3 respectively.
Apparatus
The simulation installation of foamy heavy oil ow, as shown in
Fig. 1, was designed and assembled by the pipeline testing system
and purge system. It has a maximum operating pressure of 1.0 MPa
and can work between 10 and 90
C. The foamy oil was transported
by a multiphase pump (Shanghai, China) with a maximum owrate
of 12 l/min, a maximum operating pressure of 3.0 MPa and a
maximum operating temperature of 250
C, which has great
suction performance and small pressure uctuation. There are
three 0.82 m long PVC test pipes with different internal diameters
(D) of 4, 5 and 8 mm respectively. The purge system mainly
includes a compressor, an air tank (a maximum pressure of
0.8 MPa) and a rotameter etc. The foamy oil storage tank, waste
liquid tank, and auxiliary piping were well insulated by glass wool
and controlled by a temperature control system.
XP-300C image analytical system (Shanghai, China) was used
to capture and analyze foam micrographs. Anton Paar Rheolab
QC viscometer (Graz, Austria) was adopted to test the rheological
behaviors of the foam and the oil. A combined device of a
F-400 homo-mixer (Foshan, China) with a maximum stirring rate
of 8000 rpm and a CWYF-2 high temperature-high pressure
reactor (Nantong, China) with a maximum operating tempera-
ture and pressure of 600
C and 50 MPa, was used to prepare
foamy oil. A Shangping FA2104S electronic balance with an
accuracy of 1/10,000 g (Shanghai, China) was used to weigh
various samples. A Zhongxing digital thermostatic water bath
(Shijiazhuang, China) was used as a temperature monitoring
system when preparing foamy oil. Some measuring cylinders
(1000 ml, 100 ml) and pipettes (100 ml) were used to evaluate the
foam performance.
Experimental procedure
Preparation and performance evaluation of foamy oil
Based on Waring Blender method, 50 ml water with the
required proportion of surfactants and 50 ml heavy oil was added
to a stirring cup and evenly mixed by a glass rod as the foaming
uid. Then the mixture was stirred for 15 min at a stirring rate of
4500 rpm in the reactor at 20
C and 0.1 MPa to prepare the desired
foamy oil. Due to the poor owability, the heavy oil was difcult to
be wholly transferred from the measuring cylinder to the stirring
cup after the volume was measured. Therefore, we measured the
density of the heavy oil at 20
C and weighed the mass of the oil in
accordance with the required volume in the follow-up experi-
ments.
The time for the bubbles coalescing to half of the original
volume is recorded as the half-life t1=2 of the foam system [35], and
the foaming volume V o and half-life t1=2 were used as two indexes
for evaluating foamy oil property. To evaluate the comprehensive
inuences on the foaming uid foamability, its foam composite
index (FCI) can be calculated by the formula of FCI 0:75V o t1=2

Table 1
Basic properties and compositions of J7 crude oil.

Viscosity at 50
C (mPa s) Density at 20
C (kg/m3) Bound water (wt.%) Asphaltene (wt.%) Wax (wt.%) Resin (wt.%)
932 918.9 1.97 3.79 0.71 6.13

Table 2
Foaming agents used for foamy oil preparation.

Surfactant Code HLB value Ionicity Provider

Cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide CATB 16 Cation Shanghai Chemical Reagent Plant
Cetyltrimethylammonium chloride CATC 15.8 Cation Shanghai Chemical Reagent Plant
Sodium benzenesulfonat ABS 10.6 Anion Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
Sodium dodecyl sulfate SDS 40.0 Anion Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
Coconutt diethanol amide CDEA 15 Nonionic Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
Octyl phenol ethoxylate OP-10 14.5 Nonionic Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory

Table 3
Foam stabilizers used for foamy oil preparation.

Surfactant Code Main composition MW Ionicity Provider

Carboxy methyl cellulose sodium CMC Carboxy methyl cellulose sodium 264.204 Anion Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
Polyacrylamide PAM Polyacrylamide 3  108 Anion Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
Hydroxyethyl cellulose HEC Hydroxyethyl Cellulose 2.5  105 Nonionic Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
Dodecanol Dod 1-Dodecanol 186 Nonionic Chengdu Kelong Chemical Reagent Factory
SF-1 suspending agent SF-1 Acrylic polymer Nonionic Guangzhou Feirui Chemical Ltd.

Please cite this article in press as: J. Sun, et al., Pipeline transport of heavy crudes as stable foamy oil, J. Ind. Eng. Chem. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/
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Fig. 1. Simulation installation of foamy heavy oil ow.

[36], where the units of V o and t1=2 are milliliter (ml) and minute
(min) separately. The larger the FCI value, the stronger its
comprehensive performance. According to calculated FCI values,
the comprehensive performance of foam system can be divided
into four grades, i.e. superior grade (>15,000), good grade (10,000
15,000), medium grade (500010,000), poor grade (<5000) [37].
Simulation experiment of ow characteristics
The ow characteristics of foamy oil owing through the three
test sections were investigated at different temperatures and ow
rates. Pressure drops and ow rates were monitored and acquired
in real time during the testing by a Rosemount differential pressure
transmitter and a Krohne mass ow meter. In order to reduce
accidental errors, the temperatures at the inlet and outlet of the
test sections were measured by the temperature control device
and the average values of the two were taken as the nal effective
values. After the end of each experiment, appropriate diesel was
pumped into the pipe for 35 min to fully dissolve the residual oil
on the inner pipe wall, and then the pipe was further cleaned by the
purge system.
Data processing
The liquid volume in foamy oil V l is the original volume of the
foaming uid. The foaming volume V o is the sum of gas volume V g
and liquid volume V l . Therefore, the gas volume fraction in foamy
oil, namely the foamy oil quality G can be calculated by Eq. (1):
100V g 100V o  V l
G % % 1
Vg Vl Vo
In order to reduce accidental errors, 3 sets of experimental data
for each test point were obtained and the average value was taken
as the effective foamy oil quality.
Results and discussion
Composition of foaming uid
of 1.5 g/l and oilwater volume ratio of 1:1 at 20
C was
preliminarily prepared based on the experience. The effects of
different types of foaming agents on foaming capacity of 100 ml
foaming uid are shown in Table 4.
Both nonionic and cationic surfactants (OP-10 and CDEA, CATB
and CATC) show poor foaming capacity, the foaming volumes are
small and the bubbles have an uneven distribution. On the
contrary, SDS and ABS have good compatibility with J7 heavy oil,
both of the foaming volumes are more than 360 ml and the
produced foamy oil demonstrates dispersive spherical bubbles.
Whats more, the drainage hardly adheres to the wall of the
measuring cylinder after experiments and the two anionic
surfactants show good lubricating effects.
Under the same condition, SDS shows a little larger foaming
volume than ABS, but ABS presents a longer half-life and bigger FCI
value, which indicates that the foamy oil with ABS is probably more
stable than that prepared with SDS. Therefore, ABS is used as the
foaming agent in the following experiments.
Effect of foaming agent concentration
The effect of ABS concentration on foamy oil performance was
investigated with oilwater volume ratio of 1:1 at 20
C. As shown
in Fig. 2, with the increase of ABS concentration, the foaming
volume continually increases and reaches the maximum at 1.5 g/l,
and then levels off. The half-lives at 1 and 1.5 g/l are close to each
other, while the FCI values increase to the maximum at 1.5 g/l and
then rapidly decrease.
The reason may be that when the concentration of the additive
surfactant is less than that of the critical micelle concentration
(CMC), the adsorbing amount of the surfactant in gas bubble lm is
also low. As the foaming agent increases, the adsorbing amount
increases and the surface tension will be reduced, which
eventually results in an enhancement in foaming capacity and
foam stability of the foaming uid. When the surfactant
concentration continues to increase, the adsorption reaches

Evaluation of foaming agent type

In the experiments, parts of the selected foaming agents
exhibited lower comprehensive performances at higher concen-
trations. Thus the foamy oil with each foaming agent concentration

Table 4
Performance of 100 ml foaming uid with different types of foaming agents.

Parameter Foaming agent

CATC CATB OP-10 CDEA ABS SDS

Foaming volume V0 (ml) 120 110 110 112 375 385
Half-life t1/2 (min) 78 38
FCI value (ml min) 21938 10973

Fig. 2. Effect of foaming agent concentration on foamy oil performance.

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saturation and the surface tension can not be further reduced, the
foaming volume almost remains unchanged. But when the
surfactant concentration is too high, the liquid content in bubble
lm decreases, the fragility of foam increases and the Marangoni
effect gradually weakens, nally resulting in reduced foam
stability. Therefore, the concentration of ABS for preparing foamy
oil in the following experiments is determined as 1.5 g/l.

Evaluation of foam stabilizer type

High viscosity of heavy oil itself can enhance the lm strengths
of the bubbles in foamy oil. The addition of different types of foam
stabilizers often leads to electrostatic attraction or repulsion,
chemical and physical interactions between the heavy oil, foaming
agent and foam stabilizer. The foaming uid with foam stabilizer
concentration of 2.0 g/l was prepared. The effect of different types
of foam stabilizers on foamy oil performance are shown in Fig. 3.
As can be seen in Fig. 3, all the foaming volumes reduce with the
addition of ve foam stabilizers in the foaming uid. The main
reason may be that the additive foam stabilizers limit the free
movement of the foaming agent molecules to some extent. The
tackifying stabilizers (CMC and PAM), instead of increasing the
stability of the foamy oil, make the FCI values greatly reduced. This
is mostly likely that the action mechanism of these two foam
stabilizers is to improve the stability of the bubble by increasing
the viscosity of the liquid lm. But the effects are not obvious
because the liquid lm viscosity has been high enough, and the
compatibility between the foaming agents and J7 oil is poor. In
addition, when HEC and Dod were added, the changes on half-life
were not noticeable, and the FCI values also reduced. Amazingly,
the half-life of the foamy oil with SF-1 can increase to 170 min and
the FCI value can reach more than 30,000 (superior grade).
Therefore, SF-1 is used as the foam stabilizer in follow-up study.
Effect of foam stabilizer concentration
The SF-1 concentration required for stable foamy oil was
investigated with ABS concentration of 1.5 g/l and oilwater
volume ratio of 1:1 at 20
C. As shown in Fig. 4, with the increase of
SF-1 concentration, the foaming volume continues to reduce, and
the half-life and FCI value increase at rst and then decrease. The
reason may probably lie in that, at low concentration of SF-1, the
interaction of SF-1 with the oil and foaming agent improved the
arrangement of active molecules in liquid lm. But when the
concentration is too high, some stable micelles can easily form in
the internal of the foamy oil, which will weaken the self-recovering
ability of bubble lm. This is to say when the bubble lm is
deformed, but the active molecules are bound in micelles, and can
not move to the deformation place to repair the bubble lm, which
ultimately results in the decrease of the foam oil stability.
Comparatively speaking, the foamy oil shows a better stability
at SF-1 concentration of 2.5 g/l.
Fig. 4. Effect of foam stabilizer concentration on foamy oil performance.
Effect of oilwater volume ratio
Fig. 5 shows the effect of oilwater ratio on foaming volume,
half-life and FCI value of 100 ml foaming uid at 20
C. The foaming
volume continues to increase with the decrease of oilwater ratios.
This can be attributed to that high water content makes both the
viscosity of foaming uid and the energy required for preparing
foamy oil decrease, thus the foaming volume will inevitably
increase when same mechanical energy is introduced. With oil
water ratio decreasing, the half-life and FCI value increase at rst
and then decrease rapidly. Both the half-life and FCI value reach the
maximum at oilwater ratio of 5:5. Based on the foregoing
analysis, the foamy oil prepared with 1.5 g/l ABS, 2.5 g/l SF-1 at 1:1
oilwater volume ratio shows the best stability.
Whats more, combining with the test method of rheometer and
ow loop (L = 40 m, D = 25 mm) [38], we found that the measured
phase inversion point of J7 oilwater emulsion was around 60% at
different temperatures. Meanwhile, based on the subsequent
analysis of foamy oil microstructure, it is indicated that the
foaming uid with oilwater ratio of 5:5 behaves as water in oil
emulsion, which may be due to the high viscosity and complicated
compositions of the heavy crude oil and the effects of the added
surfactants. Currently, the crude oil are often produced with a large
amount of water at the late stage production of many oilelds,
which provides favorable conditions for the eld application of
heavy oil transported in the form of foamy oil.
Effect of temperature
The stability of the foamy oil is greatly inuenced by
temperature T. As shown in Fig. 6, the foaming volume is nearly
unchanged, but the half-life and FCI value continually decrease
with the increase of temperature. The main reason may be that, on

Fig. 3. Performance of 100 ml foaming uid with different types of foam stabilizers. Fig. 5. Effect of oilwater volume ratio on foamy oil performance.

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rheological behavior of a non-Newtonian uid. As shown in

Fig. 6. Effect of temperature on foamy oil performance.
the one hand, the increase of temperature makes the spaces
between molecules of the foaming uid increased and enhances
the molecular motion, which ultimately results in the weakening
of intermolecular forces and dispersive arrangement of surfactant
molecules. On the other hand, as temperature increases, the
viscosity of foaming solution decreases, which furtherly accel-
erates the drainage rate of the bubble lm. For foamy oil, the higher
the temperature, the better the mobility, but the worse the
stability.
Foamy oil property
Foamy oil quality
Blauer et al. rst divided the foam uid into three regions based
on foam quality, i.e. dispersion region (00.52), interference
(0.520.74) and deformation (0.741.00) [39]. Afterwards, he
found the Mitchell quality range existed between 0.5236 and
0.9999 and preferably from 0.60 to 0.85, in which the foam is a
homogenous mixture with uniform bubble sizes and could be
stable for several hours [40].
Foamy oil qualities under different conditions were calculated
according to Eq. (1) and shown in Table 5. Only the anionic
surfactants (ABS and SDS) show good foaming capacity. With the
increase of ABS concentration, the foamy oil quality exceeds 73% at
1.5 g/l and then levels off. The addition of the foam stabilizer makes
the foamy oil quality decrease, and the higher the foam stabilizer
concentration, the lower the foamy oil quality. But the quality is
still more than 60% when SF-1 concentration reaches 3.0 g/l.
Whats more, as the oilwater ratio decreases, the foaming volume
increases gradually. Moreover, the temperature has smaller effect
on the foamy oil quality.
Rheological behavior
The rheological curves of the foamy oil were measured under
the shear rate range from 0 to 100 1/s at 2030
C, which shows the
Table 6, the curves can be well described by power law mode at
20 and 25
C, and all the correlation coefcients R2 are more than
0.99. But when the temperature reaches 30
C, the correlation
coefcient slightly decreases. It may be that the stability of the
foamy oil decreases with increase of temperature, and rotation of
the rotor in rheometer accelerates drainage of foam lms. Overall,
the test results are in poor agreement with Bingham model, and
the maximum correlation coefcient is only 0.9872.
The apparent viscosities at 100 1/s calculated according to the
obtained tted rheological equations are less than 120 mPa s for
power law model. In addition, for both power law model and
Bingham model, all the apparent viscosities basically decreases
with the increase of temperature and all the viscosity reduction
rates of the foamy oil are more than 97%.
The sources of foamy oil viscosity are main from the internal
friction from relative motion of liquid layers and the collision and
extrusion between dispersed bubbles. Studies have also shown
that bubbles could be elongated and gradually tend to be neatly
arranged after the foamy oil being sheared, which could reduce the
probability of bubbles colliding with each other and then reduce
the apparent viscosity [41].
Microstructure
The micrographs of the foamy oil were captured by XP-300C
image analytical system, and the microstructures in different
vision elds are shown in Fig. 7. Based on the different light
transmittance, it can be deduced that the white spherical bubbles
are gas and water, and the black parts are heavy oil drops. The
bubbles are linked together at numerous points.
Two-dimensional diameters and areas of the bubbles in
pictures were collected by using the MiVnt image analysis system,
and then the equivalent three-dimensional average diameter and
number of bubbles could be obtained. The bubble size is in accord
with normal distribution and the bubble diameter are basically
between 60 and 300 mm. The bubbles with a diameter of about
150 mm are the most, while the probability of occurrence are the
highest (Fig. 8).
At present, the decay mechanism of foam uid is generally
believed to lie in two aspects: the liquid lm drainage and the
diffusion of gas through liquid lm [42]. The pressure in small
bubbles is higher than that in large bubbles, which will make the
gas in small bubbles diffuse to large ones until the small bubbles
disappear, and large bubbles continue to expand and rupture.
Therefore, the more uniform the bubble size distribution in foamy
oil, the lower degree the bubble diffusion occurs, and then the
longer the life of the bubble and the more stable the foamy oil. The
normal distribution curve of the bubble in foamy oil is tall, which
shows the bubble size distribution is narrow. The bubble size is
relatively uniform and the diffusion rate between bubbles is slow.
This may also be one of internal factors for the good stability of the
foamy oil prepared in this study.

Characteristics of foamy oil ow

Table 5
Foamy oil quality under different conditions.
Rheological model
Foaming agent (1.5 g/l) CATC CATB OP-10 CDEA ABS SDS Generally, the rheology of foamy oil in pipe ow is much
Foamy oil quality (%) 16.7 9.1 9.1 10.7 73.3 74.0 different with that tested by a rheometer. Thus the rheological
ABS concentration (g/l) 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 3.0 model of foamy oil ow should be investigated rst in order to
Foamy oil quality (%) 25.9 65.5 73.3 73.0 72.6 predict its frictional resistance. As we all know, it is much difcult
SF-1 concentration (g/l) 0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0
to accurately describe the rheological property of owing foamy oil
Foamy oil quality (%) 73.3 68.1 64.9 63.0 62.0
Oilwater volume ratio 7:3 6:4 5:5 4:6 3:7
for its multi-phase composition and changing structure. At
Foamy oil quality (%) 34.2 47.4 63.0 70.1 73.8 present, there are main two models, namely power law model
Temperature (
C) 20 30 40 50 60 [43] and Bingham model [44], that can be used to describe the
Foamy oil quality (%) 63.0 59.2 58.3 57.4 rheological behavior of foamy uid. Furtherly, assuming dispersive
distribution of bubbles in the oil, most of researchers use

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Table 6
Fitting results of rheological curves of the foamy oil.

T Power law model Bingham model

2
Rheological equation R AV VRR Rheological equation R2 AV VRR
20 t 3:1658g_ 0:2790 0.9943 114.42 98.90 t 9:7615 0:0552g_ 0.9410 152.82 98.53
25 t 0:7679g_ 0:5743 0.9986 108.12 98.33 t 7:0782 0:0697g_ 0.9550 140.48 97.83
30 t 0:8186g_ 0:5321 0.9863 94.90 97.83 t 7:1868 0:0382g_ 0.9872 110.07 97.48


Note: T, temperature ( C); AV, apparent viscosity at 100 1/s (mPa s); VRR, viscosity reduction rate (%).

Fig. 7. Microstructures of the foamy oil at 20
C.

homogenous ow model to predict the pressure drop of foamy oil Integrating the above equation, the velocity calculation formula
ow. can be derived as:
In this study, both power law model and Bingham model were
1n Z
1n
h
Dp r
Dp n i
used to explore a more appropriate rheological model for the u
1
rn
n1 n1
R n r n 4
foamy heavy oil ow. 2KL R 2KL n1
(1) Power law model
where R is the pipe radius.
Assuming the foamy oil is a power law uid, and its constitutive
And the ow rate calculation formula can be furtherly
equation is shown as follows:
integrated as blew:

n
du Z
1n
tK  2 R
pnR3 DpR
dr Q u2prdr 5
0 3n 1 2KL
where t is the internal friction stress per unit area, K is the
consistency coefcient, n is the ow pattern index, u is the velocity where Q is the volumetric ow rate.
of the pipe ow and r is the arbitray radius of the pipe. For the average velocity in the cross-section v QA , the relation
Substituting Eq. (2) into the shear stress equation t D2Lpr, and between pressure drop and average velocity can be obtained as
following:
the velocity distribution equation can be calculated as follows:



1 DpD 8v 1 3n n
du 1 Dp r n K  6
   3 4L D 4n
dr K L 2
where A is the cross-sectional area and D is the internal pipe
where Dp is the pressure drop, L is the length of liquid column. diameter.
Taking the logarithm on both sides of Eq. (6)

 
 

DpD 1 3n n 8v
lg lg K nlg 7
4L 4n D

Based on the measured pressure drops Dp and ow rates Q, the

tted curves can be plotted in terms of the wall-shear stress
  
lg D4L
pD
and the pipe ow parameter lg 8v
D . The slope of the line is
0
dened as n0 , and the intercept is dened as k .
8

< 0 3n 1 n
K 10k = 8
: 4n
n n0
The generalized Reynolds number Re0 for power law uid ow
can be dened as below, and 2000 is taken as the critical value.

Dn v2n r
Re0 9
m


Fig. 8. Distribution of bubble diameters in foamy oil at 20 C.

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10.1016/j.jiec.2016.08.019
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where m is a self-dened parameter, which can be calculated by Integrating Eq. (11), and the velocity distribution equation in
 n
the formula m K8 6n2
n and r is the density of the uid in pipe. the gradient region can be derived as:
(2) Bingham model
Dp h i
The constitutive equation of Bingham uid is shown as follows: u R  r0 2  r  r0 2 12
4Lhp


du
t t 0 hp  10
dr
Then the ow rate in the gradient region Q1 can be furtherly
where t 0 is the limiting shear stress, hp is the structural viscosity.
obtained as below:
Substituting Eq. (10) into the shear stress equation t D2Lpr, and Z R
the velocity distribution equation can be calculated as follows: Q1 u2prdr
r0 " #
du Dp pDp R4 2R3 r0 5r0 4
 r  r 0 11  2 2
 R r0 2Rr0 3
13
dr 2Lhp 4Lhp 2 3 6
where r0 is the radius of the core region of the ow.

Fig. 9. Foamy oil ow characteristic curves tted by power law and Bingham models.

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When r r0 , the velocity in the core region v0 can be expressed The generalized Reynolds number for plastic uid ow Re0 can
as: be dened as below, and 2000 is also taken as the critical value.

Dp rvD
v0 R  r0 2 14 Re0   21
4Lhp hp 1 6th0pDv
And then integrating the above equation, the ow rate in the As shown in Fig. 9, the rheological behavior of the foamy oil in
core region Q 0 can be obtained as follows: pipe ow can be better described by power law model than
pDp 2 2  Bingham model, all the correlation coefcients of the curves tted
Q 0 pr 0 2 v 0 R r0  2Rr0 3 r40 15 by the former model are more than 0.99, but most of the
4Lhp
correlation coefcients of the curves tted by the latter model
The total ow rate Q is the sum of the ow rates in the gradient basically maintain at about 0.97.
and core region. At the same pipe diameter, with the increase of temperature,

 the consistency coefcient K decreases and the ow pattern index
pR4 Dp 4 r0 1 r40
Q Q0 Q1 1 16 n varies irregularly when the prepared foamy oil are treated as
8Lhp 3 R 3 R4 power law uid. Meanwhile, both of the limiting shear stress and
For Dp0 R Dpr0, Eq. (16) can be furtherly deformed as the structural viscosity reduce when the foamy oil regarded as
following equation: Bingham uid. At the same temperature, with increasing the pipe
diameter, neither of the consistency coefcient and ow pattern


pR4 Dp 4 Dp0 1 Dp0 4 index show any regularity in variation for the power law uid, but
Q 1 17
8Lhp 3 Dp 3 Dp4 the limiting shear stress decreases and the structural viscosity
increases for the Bingham uid. In addition, all the calculated
where Dp0 is the initial pressure drop. generalized Reynolds numbers at different experimental condi-
When the core region of the pipe ow is tions are less than 400, which demonstrates a laminar ow.
small,R4  r40 ,Dp4  Dp40 , so the simplied equation can be
obtained as following by neglecting the higher order terms. Drag characteristic

 The friction drag coefcient is a key parameter for the
pR4 4 calculation of resistance loss of uid ow. The Darcy friction
Q Dp  Dp0 18
8Lhp 3 coefcient l or the Fanning friction coefcient f (f l=4) are
generally used in engineering and laboratory experiments.
Similarly, for the average velocity in the cross-section v QA ,
Eq. (18) can be deformed as below: 8t w
l 22
rv 2
Dp 32hp 16 t 0
v 19 where t w is the shear stress at the pipe wall.
L D2 3 D
The friction loss is actually the energy loss of the sheared uid
Substituting the tested values of pressure drop Dp and ow rate on the macro-performance, thus the shear rate at the pipe wall g_ w
Q into Eq. (19), the tted curves can be constructed in the pressure is also a signicant parameter for measuring the drag character-
drop gradient DLp versus the average velocity v. The slope of the line istics of uid ows.
00
is dened as n00 , and the intercept is dened as k . For power law uid, the wall-shear rate can be calculated as:
8


> 2 00 3n 1 n 8v n
< hp D n
> g_ w K 23
32 00 4n D
20
>
: t 0 3Dk
>
For Bingham uid, the wall-shear rate can be expressed as:
16
4 8v
g_ w t 0 hp 24
3 D

Fig. 10. Friction drag coefcient versus wall-shear rate.

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Fig. 11. Friction drag coefcient versus generalized Reynolds number.
Table 7
Viscosity reduction effect of J7 heavy oil at 30
C.
Different oils Viscosity testing device
Emulsied heavy oil (50 vol.% water) Rotational rheometer
Heavy oil Rotational rheometer
Foamy oil Rotational rheometer
Foamy oil Simulation installation (D = 8 mm)
Foamy oil Simulation installation (D = 5 mm)
Foamy oil Simulation installation (D = 4 mm)
The changing regularity that the friction drag coefcient l
varies with the wall-shear rate g_ w is similar for the power law and
Bingham uid at the same condition. Therefore, the changing
curves for power law uid are taken as example and shown in
Fig. 10.
All the friction drag coefcients gradually decrease with the
increase of wall shear rates. In addition, as shown in Fig. 10a, the
friction drag coefcient reduces with increasing temperature at the
same pipe diameter. This can be contributed to that the friction
drag coefcient is positively correlated with pressure gradient, and
the pressure gradient of foamy oil ow reduces with increasing
temperature.
Fig. 10b shows the effect of pipe diameter on the friction drag
coefcient. At the same temperature and ow velocity, the ow
pattern index n deceases with deceasing the internal diameter D,
thus the smaller the pipe diameter, the larger the wall shear rate.
But at the same temperature and inner diameter, the wall shear
rate increases with increasing the ow velocity. Whats more, the l
decreases with the increase of internal diameter at the same wall
shear rate. This is due to that the larger the pipe diameter, the
higher the average velocity in the cross-section, thus the smaller
the friction drag coefcient.
Numerous studies have been conducted on the prediction of the
friction drag coefcient l [4547]. It is generally believed that the
l for the power law and Bingham uid at laminar ow can be
calculated be the theoretical formula l Re 64
0 . In this experiment,
we found that the tting equation was in very good agreement
with the theoretical formula when the foamy oil was treated as
Power law uid (Fig. 11a), but the goodness of t decreased
obviously when we considered the foamy oil as Bingham uid
(Fig. 11b). Substituting the tted friction drag coefcient into the
Dp
equation l 2D
rLv2 , 189 sets of pressure drops of foamy oil ow
under different ow conditions were calculated. Comparatively
speaking, the prediction accuracy of the power-law model is higher
Please cite this article in press as: J. Sun, et al., Pipeline transport of heavy crudes as stable foamy oil, J. Ind. Eng. Chem. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.jiec.2016.08.019
9
Viscosity or apparent viscosity at different shear rates (mPa s)
100 1/s 1000 1/s 3000 1/s
12961.4 9342.3 7991.1
4367.4 4367.1 4366.3
94.9 35.4 22.2
46.5 35.6 33.2
30.4 23.3 21.7
30.3 23.0 20.4
than the Bingham model, the absolute maximum relative errors of
the two models can be up to 13.4% and 35.8% respectively, and their
respective absolute average relative errors are 4.3% and 6.3%. It is
furtherly proved that the properties of the foam oil are more close
to that of the power law uid.
Viscosity reduction effect
The apparent viscosity of foam uid is affected by shear rate,
foam quality, temperature, pressure, bubble size, etc. In this study,
viscosities of J7 heavy oil, and apparent viscosities of the
emulsied heavy oil and foamy oil at 30
C were measured or
calculated at different shear rates (Table 7).
As shown in Table 7, there exist some differences in apparent
viscosities of the foamy oil tested by rheometer and small-scale
ow loop (D  8 mm), but the apparent viscosity of the foamy oil
prepared by Waring Blender method is far lower than that of heavy
oil, and the minimum viscosity-reducing rate exceeds 97%. The
foamy oil prepared in this experiment contains 50 volume percent
of water, and all the apparent viscosities tested by rheometer or
ow loop apparatus are less than 100 mPas. Comparing with the
emulsied J7 heavy oil with the same water content, the viscosity
reduction rates are more than 99.5%. This is probably because the
surfactants and bubbles changed the internal structure and greatly
improved the owability of the foamy oil.
Conclusions
Based on the synergy of foaming agents and foam stabilizers, a
kind of stable foamy heavy oil was prepared with 1.5 g/l ABS, 2.5 g/l
SF-1, oilwater volume ratio of 1 and nitrogen volume fraction of
63% at 20
C and 0.1 MPa. The foaming volume and half-life of
100 ml foaming uid can reach 270 ml and 274 min respectively.
The foamy oil quality is in the Mitchell quality range of foam uid.
In addition, the bubbles, namely the gas bubbles and water
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Please cite this article in press as: J. Sun, et al., Pipeline transport of heavy crudes as stable foamy oil, J. Ind. Eng. Chem. (2016), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.jiec.2016.08.019