Effects of salinity and ionic composition of smart water on mineral scaling in carbonate reservoirs during water flooding

Researchers have proved the significance of water injection by tuning its composition and salinity into the reservoir during smart water flooding. Once the smart water invades through the pore spaces, it destabilises crude oil-brine-rock (COBR) that leads to change in wettability of the reservoir rocks. During hydrocarbon accumulation and migration, polar organic compounds were being adsorbed on the rock surface making the reservoir oil/mixed wet in nature. Upon invasion of smart water, due to detachment of polar compounds from the rock surfaces, the wettability changes from oil/mixed wet to water wet thus enhances the oil recovery efficiency. The objective of this paper is to find optimum salinity and ionic composition of the synthetic brines at which maximum oil recovery would be observed. Three core flood studies have been conducted in the laboratory to investigate the effect of pH, composition and salinity of the injected brine over oil recovery. Every time, flooding has been conducted at reservoir formation brine salinity i.e at 1400 ppm followed by different salinities. Here, tertiary mode of flooding has been carried out for two core samples while secondary flooding for one. Results showed maximum oil recovery by 40.12% of original oil in place (OOIP) at 1050ppm brine salinity at secondary mode of flooding. So, optimized smart water has been proposed with 03 major salts, KCl, MgCl2 and CaCl2 in secondary mode of flooding that showed maximum oil recovery in terms of original oil in place.

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Wettability alteration analysis of smart water/novel functionalized nanocomposites for enhanced oil recovery

Petroleum Science ◽

10.1007/s12182-020-00436-y ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 (5) ◽

pp. 1318-1328

Author(s):

Sara Habibi ◽

Arezou Jafari ◽

Zahra Fakhroueian

Keyword(s):

Enhanced Oil Recovery ◽

Oil Recovery ◽

Ionic Composition ◽

Water Flooding ◽

Wettability Alteration ◽

Core Flooding ◽

Sulfate Ions ◽

Smart Water ◽

Eor Processes ◽

Co Precipitation

Abstract Smart water flooding, as a popular method to change the wettability of carbonate rocks, is one of the interesting and challenging issues in reservoir engineering. In addition, the recent studies show that nanoparticles have a great potential for application in EOR processes. However, little research has been conducted on the use of smart water with nanoparticles in enhanced oil recovery. In this study, stability, contact angle and IFT measurements and multi-step core flooding tests were designed to investigate the effect of the ionic composition of smart water containing SO42− and Ca2+ ions in the presence of nanofluid on EOR processes. The amine/organosiloxane@Al2O3/SiO2 (AOAS) nanocomposite previously synthesized using co-precipitation-hydrothermal method has been used here. However, for the first time the application of this nanocomposite along with smart water has been studied in this research. Results show that by increasing the concentrations of calcium and sulfate ions in smart water, oil recovery is improved by 9% and 10%, respectively, compared to seawater. In addition, the use of smart water and nanofluids simultaneously is very effective on increasing oil recovery. Finally, the best performance was observed in smart water containing two times of sulfate ions concentration (SW2S) with nanofluids, showing increased efficiency of about 7.5%.

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Wettability Modifier for Enhanced Oil Recovery in Carbonate Reservoir: An Overview

Advanced Materials Research ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.1113.643 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 1113 ◽

pp. 643-647

Author(s):

Noor Azreen Jilani ◽

Nur Hashimah Alias ◽

Tengku Amran Tengku Mohd ◽

Nurul Aimi Ghazali ◽

Effah Yahya

Keyword(s):

Oil Recovery ◽

Oil And Gas ◽

Ionic Composition ◽

Oil And Gas Industry ◽

Carbonate Reservoir ◽

Water Flooding ◽

Chemical Flooding ◽

Reservoir Water ◽

Smart Water ◽

Enhance Oil Recovery

This article is an overview of potential application of wettability modifier to enhance oil recovery in carbonate reservoir. In oil and gas industry, oil recovery can be divided into three stages which are primary recovery, secondary recovery and tertiary recovery. The primary recovery is the initial stages of oil recovery. At this stage, oil was displaced toward production well by natural drive mechanisms that naturally exist in the reservoir. Water is commonly used to enhance oil recovery by injected into the reservoir because of it is commercially available, less expensive and capable to maintain the reservoir pressure. In conclusion, smart water flooding is a new technique to solve the complexity problem of carbonate reservoir by manipulating the salinity and ionic composition in high temperature. Hence, smart water can be an excellent candidate as a displacing fluid in chemical flooding for enhanced the oil recovery (EOR).

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