Mechanistic Study of Wettability Alteration of Quartz Surface Induced by Nonionic Surfactants and Interaction between Crude Oil and Quartz in the Presence of Sodium Chloride Salt

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 3634-3643 ◽  
Author(s):  
Achinta Bera ◽  
Kissmathulla S ◽  
Keka Ojha ◽  
T. Kumar ◽  
Ajay Mandal
2014 ◽  
Vol 962-965 ◽  
pp. 539-543
Author(s):  
Zi Yuan Qi ◽  
Ye Fei Wang ◽  
Hai Yang Yu ◽  
Xiao Li Xu

In order to study the effect of surfactants on wettability of quartz surface, the dynamic contact angles of different surfactants on water-wet and oil-wet quartz surfaces were measured. The experimental results showed that the advancing contact angles of cationic surfactants, anionic surfactants and nonionic surfactants on oil-wet quartz surfaces decrease with the increase of surfactant concentrations; the wettability of water-wet quartz plates remains water-wet after treated by all three kinds of surfactants. Surfactants can reverse the wettability from oil-wet to water-wet at low concentrations; The electrostatic force, hydrophobic force and the attraction between surfactant and polar components of crude oil are the key interactions in the wettability alteration process.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
I Wayan Rakananda Saputra ◽  
David S. Schechter

Abstract Surfactant performance is a function of its hydrophobic tail, and hydrophilic head in combination with crude oil composition, brine salinity, rock composition, and reservoir temperature. Specifically, for nonionic surfactants, temperature is a dominant variable due to the nature of the ethylene oxide (EO) groups in the hydrophilic head known as the cloud point temperature. This study aims to highlight the existence of temperature operating window for nonionic surfactants to optimize oil recovery during EOR applications in unconventional reservoirs. Two nonylphenol (NP) ethoxylated nonionic surfactants with different EO head groups were investigated in this study. A medium and light grade crude oil were utilized for this study. Core plugs from a carbonate-rich outcrop and a quartz-rich outcrop were used for imbibition experiments. Interfacial tension and contact angle measurements were performed to investigate the effect of temperature on the surfactant interaction in an oil/brine and oil/brine/rock system respectively. Finally, a series of spontaneous imbibition experiments was performed on three temperatures selected based on the cloud point of each surfactant in order to construct a temperature operating window for each surfactant. Both nonionic surfactants were observed to improve oil recovery from the two oil-wet oil/rock system tested in this study. The improvement was observed on both final recovery and rate of spontaneous imbibition. However, it was observed that each nonionic surfactant has its optimum temperature operating window relative to the cloud point of that surfactant. For both nonionic surfactants tested in this study, this window begins from the cloud point of the surfactant up to 25°F above the cloud point. Below this operating window, the surfactant showed subpar performance in increasing oil recovery. This behavior is caused by the thermodynamic equilibrium of the surfactant at this temperature which drives the molecule to be more soluble in the aqueous-phase as opposed to partitioning at the interface. Above the operating window, surfactant performance was also inferior. Although for this condition, the behavior is caused by the preference of the surfactant molecule to be in the oleic-phase rather than the aqueous-phase. One important conclusion is the surfactant achieved its optimum performance when it positions itself on the oil/water interface, and this configuration is achieved when the temperature of the system is in the operating window mentioned above. Additionally, it was also observed that the 25°F operating window varies based on the characteristic of the crude oil. A surfactant study is generally performed on a single basin, with a single crude oil on a single reservoir temperature or even on a proxy model at room temperature. This study aims to highlight the importance of applying the correct reservoir temperature when investigating nonionic surfactant behavior. Furthermore, this study aims to introduce a temperature operating window concept for nonionic surfactants. This work demonstrates that there is not a "one size fits all" surfactant design.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rukaun Chai ◽  
Yuetian Liu ◽  
Qianjun Liu ◽  
Xuan He ◽  
Pingtian Fan

Abstract Unconventional reservoir plays an increasingly important role in the world energy system, but its recovery is always quite low. Therefore, the economic and effective enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technology is urgently required. Moreover, with the aggravation of greenhouse effect, carbon neutrality has become the human consensus. How to sequestrate CO2 more economically and effectively has aroused wide concerns. Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS)-EOR is a win-win technology, which can not only enhance oil recovery but also increase CO2 sequestration efficiency. However, current CCUS-EOR technologies usually face serious gas channeling which finally result in the poor performance on both EOR and CCUS. This study introduced CO2 electrochemical conversion into CCUS-EOR, which successively combines CO2 electrochemical reduction and crude oil electrocatalytic cracking both achieves EOR and CCUS. In this study, multiscale experiments were conducted to study the effect and mechanism of CO2 electrochemical reduction for CCUS-EOR. Firstly, the catalyst and catalytic electrode were synthetized and then were characterized by using scanning electron microscope (SEM) & energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Then, electrolysis experiment & liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR) experiments were implemented to study the mechanism of CO2 electrochemical reduction. And electrolysis experiment & gas chromatography (GC) & viscosity & density experiments were used to investigate the mechanism of crude oil electrocatalytic cracking. Finally, contact angle and coreflooding experiments were respectively conducted to study the effect of the proposed technology on wettability and CCUS-EOR. SEM & EDS & XPS results confirmed that the high pure SnO2 nanoparticles with the hierarchical, porous structure, and the large surface area were synthetized. Electrolysis & 1H NMR experiment showed that CO2 has converted into formate with the catalysis of SnO2 nanoparticles. Electrolysis & GC & Density & Viscosity experiments indicated that the crude oil was electrocatalytically cracked into the light components (<C20) from the heavy components (C21∼C37). As voltage increases from 2.0V to 7.0V, the intensity of CO2 electrocchemical reduction and crude oil electrocatalytic cracking enhances to maximum at 3.5V (i.e., formate concentration reaches 6.45mmol/L and carbon peak decreases from C17 to C15) and then weakens. Contact angle results indicated that CO2 electrochemical reduction and crude oil electocatalytic cracking work jointly to promote wettability alteration. Thereof, CO2 electrochemical reduction effect is dominant. Coreflooding results indicated that CO2 electrochemical reduction technology has great potential on EOR and CCUS. With the SnO2 catalytic electrode at optimal voltage (3.5V), the additional recovery reaches 9.2% and CO2 sequestration efficiency is as high as 72.07%. This paper introduced CO2 electrochemical conversion into CCUS-EOR, which successfully combines CO2 electrochemical reduction and crude oil electrocatalytic cracking into one technology. It shows great potential on CCUS-EOR and more studies are required to reveal its in-depth mechanisms.


SPE Journal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (03) ◽  
pp. 803-818 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehrnoosh Moradi Bidhendi ◽  
Griselda Garcia-Olvera ◽  
Brendon Morin ◽  
John S. Oakey ◽  
Vladimir Alvarado

Summary Injection of water with a designed chemistry has been proposed as a novel enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) method, commonly referred to as low-salinity (LS) or smart waterflooding, among other labels. The multiple names encompass a family of EOR methods that rely on modifying injection-water chemistry to increase oil recovery. Despite successful laboratory experiments and field trials, underlying EOR mechanisms remain controversial and poorly understood. At present, the vast majority of the proposed mechanisms rely on rock/fluid interactions. In this work, we propose an alternative fluid/fluid interaction mechanism (i.e., an increase in crude-oil/water interfacial viscoelasticity upon injection of designed brine as a suppressor of oil trapping by snap-off). A crude oil from Wyoming was selected for its known interfacial responsiveness to water chemistry. Brines were prepared with analytic-grade salts to test the effect of specific anions and cations. The brines’ ionic strengths were modified by dilution with deionized water to the desired salinity. A battery of experiments was performed to show a link between dynamic interfacial viscoelasticity and recovery. Experiments include double-wall ring interfacial rheometry, direct visualization on microfluidic devices, and coreflooding experiments in Berea sandstone cores. Interfacial rheological results show that interfacial viscoelasticity generally increases as brine salinity is decreased, regardless of which cations and anions are present in brine. However, the rate of elasticity buildup and the plateau value depend on specific ions available in solution. Snap-off analysis in a microfluidic device, consisting of a flow-focusing geometry, demonstrates that increased viscoelasticity suppresses interfacial pinch-off, and sustains a more continuous oil phase. This effect was examined in coreflooding experiments with sodium sulfate brines. Corefloods were designed to limit wettability alteration by maintaining a low temperature (25°C) and short aging times. Geochemical analysis provided information on in-situ water chemistry. Oil-recovery and pressure responses were shown to directly correlate with interfacial elasticity [i.e., recovery factor (RF) is consistently greater the larger the induced interfacial viscoelasticity for the system examined in this paper]. Our results demonstrate that a largely overlooked interfacial effect of engineered waterflooding can serve as an alternative and more complete explanation of LS or engineered waterflooding recovery. This new mechanism offers a direction to design water chemistry for optimized waterflooding recovery in engineered water-chemistry processes, and opens a new route to design EOR methods.


1993 ◽  
Vol 1 (01) ◽  
pp. 117-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.M. Wolcott ◽  
F.R. Groves ◽  
D.E. Trujillo ◽  
H.G. Lee

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (12) ◽  
pp. 7354-7359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziyuan Qi ◽  
Yefei Wang ◽  
Hong He ◽  
Dandan Li ◽  
Xiaoli Xu

2008 ◽  
Vol 48 (9) ◽  
pp. 1194 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. L. Pearce ◽  
D. G. Masters ◽  
R. H. Jacob ◽  
D. L. Hopkins ◽  
D. W. Pethick

Under commercial conditions in Australia, lambs are often dehydrated at slaughter despite access to water at the abattoir. Dehydration results in reduced fluid content of meat, which causes liveweight and carcass weight loss. Two experiments evaluated hydration status and carcass characteristics in lambs fed increased levels of sodium chloride (salt) and/or betaine before slaughter. Both experiments were 2 × 2 factorial designs with two levels of salt added [0 and 50 g/kg dry matter (DM)] and two levels of betaine added (0 and 6.7 g/kg DM) to the diets. The treatment diets were introduced to sheep over a 7–8-day period and then fed at 1.5 kg/day for the following 7 days. In experiment 1, 96 Poll Dorset–Merino cross wether lambs (45.9 ± 0.17 kg) were fed in individual pens and in experiment 2, 204 Merino wether lambs (43.1 ± 0.35 kg) were fed in group pens. In the first experiment, water and feed were withheld from the end of the treatment feeding period until slaughter 48 h later. In the second experiment, feed and water were withheld for the first 24 h after treatment but water was available for the next 24 h immediately before slaughter. In both experiments, consumption of the high salt diet decreased urine specific gravity and osmolarity at the end of the feeding period and after 24 h without access to water. This indicates an improved hydration status at this time. However, the difference in hydration status related to feeding salt declined during the 48-h lairage period and there were no significant differences in hot carcass weight or muscle DM among groups at slaughter. It could be concluded from this result that the addition of salt has little commercial value; however, this may not be the case. The lambs in experiment 2 did not behave according to industry expectations. They all drank water in the last 24 h in lairage and none of the groups showed severe dehydration. Further research is justified to determine if the lambs fed the diets with no added salt drunk in lairage as a learned response from the lambs fed salt and, if so, whether this can be developed into a commercial strategy. Feeding betaine did not result in any changes in hydration status or carcass characteristics.


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