Numerical and experimental study of a novel aerodynamic foam breaker for foam drilling fluid

Defoaming is a key technology for increasing the efficiency of foam drilling in petroleum engineering. To enhance the performance of a mechanical foam breaker in foam drilling, a novel aerodynamic foam breaker with two annular slits was investigated in this study. The computational fluid dynamics code of ANSYS Fluent was used to simulate the velocity and pressure distribution inside the foam breaker, and the optimum distance between the two annular slits was determined based on the simulation methods. Meanwhile, a series of experiments were conducted to test the actual performance of the foam breaker. The results demonstrate that various factors may affect the efficiency of the foam breaker, including the foam gas-liquid ratio, basic liquid viscosity, and air supply method. A higher gas-liquid ratio of the foam and air supply pressure result in a superior foam breaker performance. The viscosity of the foam liquid phase exhibits exactly the opposite behavior, meaning that the foam breaker more effectively destroys foam from a lower-viscosity liquid. This study verifies the practicability of this novel aerodynamic foam breaker and discusses the effects of different parameters on the defoaming percentage, and this study can act as a reference and guidance for subsequent defoaming research.