Steam channeling, one serious problem in the process of steam flooding in heavy oil reservoir, decreases the sweep efficiency of steam to cause a lower oil recovery. Viscosity reducer and nitrogen foam, two effective methods to improve oil recovery with different mechanism, present a satisfactory result after steam flooding. In this article, a 2D visualized device was introduced to investigate the synergistic development effect of two different chemical additives and intuitively study their flowing characteristic in porous media, as well as macroscopic and microscopic mechanism of improving heavy oil recovery by chemical additives after steam flooding. The results showed that the fingering phenomenon was generated obviously in the process of steam flooding, which restricted the swept area of steam. Due to decreasing oil-water interface tension, O/W emulsion with lower viscosity was formed to enhance the oil flow capacity and polish up the displacement efficiency of steam after injecting viscosity reducer. And the synergistic effect of viscosity reducer & foaming agent was more conductive to improve displacement efficiency of steam, with 4.3% of oil recovery higher than purely viscosity reducer assisting steam flooding in this process. Microscopic results indicated that thermal foams can be trapped in the porous media to improve injection profile effectively and displace the residual oil caused by steam flooding. The ultimate oil recovery of synergistic development is 65.6%, 11.0% higher than one additive (viscosity reducer). This article can provide reference for the study of thermochemistry assisted steam flooding in heavy oil reservoir.@en

It is very important to quantitatively analyze steam chamber expanding and bottom water invading during steam flooding. Firstly, a novel method was established to identify the moment of water invading based on the energy conservation law. Then, a series of experiments were carried out to research the effect of steam flooding through 3D physical simulation and oil-component analysis. The results showed that water invading was recognized through the inflection point of tangent slope of temperature vs. time. Steam mainly migrated in upper layer and hot water moved downwards into bottom layer. The four stages of steam flooding were corresponding to the growth processes of steam chamber, such as expanding, advancing, channeling and overriding. The ultimate oil recovery factor was only 36.00%. The shape of water coning deformed from a triangle to a trapezoid. Finally, the dimensionless volume of water coning was about 32.29%. During steam flooding, the content of oil components gradually changed due to the effect of distillation. The content of light hydrocarbon was higher at the front of steam chamber. However, heavy components mainly occupied the swept zone of steam flooding. The results are important in exploitation practice aiming at heavy oil reservoirs with bottom water.@en