Foams have been widely used to control fluid mobility in improved oil recovery as well as in near-wellbore production enhancement operations, such as acid diversion. The efficiency of fluid blockage and diversion depends strongly on the geological layering of the formation and on the occurrence of capillary cross-flow. However, these effects have not been studied in detail in the literature. In this paper, we report an experimental study of foam-induced fluid diversion in isolated and capillary-communicating double layer cores. Natural rocks were used to manufacture concentric double layer cores, having final permeability contrasts in the range of 10-200. We also used capillary-communicating double layer cores, obtained by sintering two homogeneous glass bead layers. In addition to pressure drop monitoring, the in-situ fluid saturation was visualized using X-ray computerized tomography. A range of foam qualities has been investigated.

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