Experimental Investigation of a Viscous Surfactant and Surfactant Flooding to Enhance Oil Recovery
A chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) process receives more attentions nowadays. Crude Terephthalic Acid (CTA) as a chemical compound is used for flooding here as an alternative to the traditional hydrolyzed polyacryl amide (HPAM). Crude Oil samples from an Iranian oil field were used during the flooding tests. Sand packed models using two different sizes of sand mainly 50 and 100 meshes were employed in this investigation. A comparison between water flooding and CTA flooding as a secondary oil recovery process revealed that the recovery was improved by 10% when CTA was used. The effect of various injection rates and different concentration of chemical solutions on the recovery factor have been checked. Besides, experimental results improved the surfactant behavior of the CTA solution in water. Moreover, at tertiary state, Sodium Dodocyl Sulfate (SDS) as an anionic surfactant was flooded. Experiments showed that recovery factor increased by 5% OOIP while using SDS.