scholarly journals A Review on the Progress of Ion-Engineered Water Flooding

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alibi Kilybay ◽  
Bisweswar Ghosh ◽  
Nithin Chacko Thomas

In the oil and gas industry, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) plays a major role to meet the global requirement for energy. Many types of EOR are being applied depending on the formations, fluid types, and the condition of the field. One of the latest and promising EOR techniques is application of ion-engineered water, also known as low salinity or smart water flooding. This EOR technique has been studied by researchers for different types of rocks. The mechanisms behind ion-engineered water flooding have not been confirmed yet, but there are many proposed mechanisms. Most of the authors believe that the main mechanism behind smart water flooding is the wettability alteration. However, other proposed mechanisms are interfacial tension (IFT) reduction between oil and injected brine, rock dissolution, and electrical double layer expansion. Theoretically, all the mechanisms have an effect on the oil recovery. There are some evidences of success of smart water injection on the field scale. Chemical reactions that happen with injection of smart water are different in sandstone and carbonate reservoirs. It is important to understand how these mechanisms work. In this review paper, the possible mechanisms behind smart water injection into the carbonate reservoir with brief history are discussed.

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (8) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Hussain Ali Baker ◽  
Kareem A. Alwan ◽  
Saher Faris Fadhil

Smart water flooding (low salinity water flooding) was mainly invested in a sandstone reservoir. The main reasons for using low salinity water flooding are; to improve oil recovery and to give a support for the reservoir pressure. In this study, two core plugs of sandstone were used with different permeability from south of Iraq to explain the effect of water injection with different ions concentration on the oil recovery. Water types that have been used are formation water, seawater, modified low salinity water, and deionized water. The effects of water salinity, the flow rate of water injected, and the permeability of core plugs have been studied in order to summarize the best conditions of low salinity water flooding. The result of this experimental work shows that the water without any free ions (deionized water) and modified low salinity water have improved better oil recovery than the formation water and seawater as a secondary oil process. The increase in oil recovery factor related to the wettability alteration during low salinity water flooding which causes a decrease in the interfacial tension between the crude oil in porous media and the surface of reservoir rocks. As well as the dissolution of minerals such as calcite Ca+2 was observed in this work, which causes an increase in the pH value. All these factors led to change the wettability of rock to be more water-wet, so the oil recovery can be increased.  


2015 ◽  
Vol 1113 ◽  
pp. 643-647
Author(s):  
Noor Azreen Jilani ◽  
Nur Hashimah Alias ◽  
Tengku Amran Tengku Mohd ◽  
Nurul Aimi Ghazali ◽  
Effah Yahya

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).


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 6652-6668

Historically, smart water flooding is proved as one of the methods used to enhance oil recovery from hydrocarbon reservoirs. This method has been spread due to its low cost and ease of operation, with changing the composition and concentration of salts in the water, the smart water injection leads to more excellent compatibility with rock and fluids. However, due to a large number of sandstone reservoirs in the world and the increase of the recovery factor using this high-efficiency method, a problem occurs with the continued injection of smart water into these reservoirs a phenomenon happened in which called rock leaching. Indeed, sand production is the most common problem in these fields. Rock wettability alteration toward water wetting is considered as the main cause of sand production during the smart water injection mechanism. During this process, due to stresses on the rock surface as well as disturbance of equilibrium, the sand production in the porous media takes place. In this paper, the effect of wettability alteration of oil wetted sandstones (0.005,0.01,0.02 and 0.03 molar stearic acid in normal heptane) on sand production in the presence of smart water is fully investigated. The implementation of an effective chemical method, which is nanoparticles, have been executed to prevent sand production. By stabilizing silica nanoparticles (SiO2) at an optimum concentration of 2000 ppm in smart water (pH=8) according to the results of Zeta potential and DLS test, the effect of wettability alteration of oil wetted sandstones on sand production in the presence of smart water with nanoparticles is thoroughly reviewed. Ultimately, a comparison of the results showed that nanoparticles significantly reduced sand production.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 925-947
Author(s):  
Erfan Hosseini ◽  
Mohammad Sarmadivaleh ◽  
Dana Mohammadnazar

AbstractNumerous studies concluded that water injection with modified ionic content/salinity in sandstones would enhance the oil recovery factor due to some mechanisms. However, the effects of smart water on carbonated formations are still indeterminate due to a lack of experimental investigations and researches. This study investigates the effects of low-salinity (Low Sal) solutions and its ionic content on interfacial tension (IFT) reduction in one of the southwestern Iranian carbonated reservoirs. A set of organized tests are designed and performed to find each ion’s effects and total dissolved solids (TDS) on the candidate carbonated reservoir. A sequence of wettability and IFT (at reservoir temperature) tests are performed to observe the effects of controlling ions (sulfate, magnesium, calcium, and sodium) and different salinities on the main mechanisms (i.e., wettability alteration and IFT reduction). All IFT tests are performed at reservoir temperature (198 °F) to minimize the difference between reservoir and laboratory-observed alterations. In this paper, the effects of four different ions (SO42-, Ca2+, Mg2+, Na+) and total salinity TDS (40,000, 20,000, 5000 ppm) are investigated. From all obtained results, the best two conditions are applied in core flooding tests to obtain the relative permeability alterations using unsteady-state methods and Cydarex software. The final part is the simulation of the whole process using the Schlumberger Eclipse black oil simulator (E100, Ver. 2010) on the candidate reservoir sector. To conclude, at Low Sal (i.e., 5000 ppm), the sulfate ion increases sulfate concentration lower IFT, while in higher salinities, increasing sulfate ion increases IFT. Also, increasing calcium concentration at high TDS (i.e., 40,000 ppm) decreases the amount of wettability alteration. In comparison, in lower TDS values (20,000 and 5000 ppm), calcium shows a positive effect, and its concentration enhanced the alteration process. Using Low Sal solutions at water cut equal or below 10% lowers recovery rate during simulations while lowering the ultimate recovery of less than 5%.


2014 ◽  
Vol 695 ◽  
pp. 499-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamad Faizul Mat Ali ◽  
Radzuan Junin ◽  
Nor Hidayah Md Aziz ◽  
Adibah Salleh

Malaysia oilfield especially in Malay basin has currently show sign of maturity phase which involving high water-cut and also pressure declining. In recent event, Malaysia through Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS) will be first implemented an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project at the Tapis oilfield and is scheduled to start operations in 2014. In this project, techniques utilizing water-alternating-gas (WAG) injection which is a type of gas flooding method in EOR are expected to improve oil recovery to the field. However, application of gas flooding in EOR process has a few flaws which including poor sweep efficiency due to high mobility ratio of oil and gas that promotes an early breakthrough. Therefore, a concept of carbonated water injection (CWI) in which utilizing CO2, has ability to dissolve in water prior to injection was applied. This study is carried out to assess the suitability of CWI to be implemented in improving oil recovery in simulated sandstone reservoir. A series of displacement test to investigate the range of recovery improvement at different CO2 concentrations was carried out with different recovery mode stages. Wettability alteration properties of CWI also become one of the focuses of the study. The outcome of this study has shown a promising result in recovered residual oil by alternating the wettability characteristic of porous media becomes more water-wet.


2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (01) ◽  
pp. 12-13
Author(s):  
Manas Pathak ◽  
Tonya Cosby ◽  
Robert K. Perrons

Artificial intelligence (AI) has captivated the imagination of science-fiction movie audiences for many years and has been used in the upstream oil and gas industry for more than a decade (Mohaghegh 2005, 2011). But few industries evolve more quickly than those from Silicon Valley, and it accordingly follows that the technology has grown and changed considerably since this discussion began. The oil and gas industry, therefore, is at a point where it would be prudent to take stock of what has been achieved with AI in the sector, to provide a sober assessment of what has delivered value and what has not among the myriad implementations made so far, and to figure out how best to leverage this technology in the future in light of these learnings. When one looks at the long arc of AI in the oil and gas industry, a few important truths emerge. First among these is the fact that not all AI is the same. There is a spectrum of technological sophistication. Hollywood and the media have always been fascinated by the idea of artificial superintelligence and general intelligence systems capable of mimicking the actions and behaviors of real people. Those kinds of systems would have the ability to learn, perceive, understand, and function in human-like ways (Joshi 2019). As alluring as these types of AI are, however, they bear little resemblance to what actually has been delivered to the upstream industry. Instead, we mostly have seen much less ambitious “narrow AI” applications that very capably handle a specific task, such as quickly digesting thousands of pages of historical reports (Kimbleton and Matson 2018), detecting potential failures in progressive cavity pumps (Jacobs 2018), predicting oil and gas exports (Windarto et al. 2017), offering improvements for reservoir models (Mohaghegh 2011), or estimating oil-recovery factors (Mahmoud et al. 2019). But let’s face it: As impressive and commendable as these applications have been, they fall far short of the ambitious vision of highly autonomous systems that are capable of thinking about things outside of the narrow range of tasks explicitly handed to them. What is more, many of these narrow AI applications have tended to be modified versions of fairly generic solutions that were originally designed for other industries and that were then usefully extended to the oil and gas industry with a modest amount of tailoring. In other words, relatively little AI has been occurring in a way that had the oil and gas sector in mind from the outset. The second important truth is that human judgment still matters. What some technology vendors have referred to as “augmented intelligence” (Kimbleton and Matson 2018), whereby AI supplements human judgment rather than sup-plants it, is not merely an alternative way of approaching AI; rather, it is coming into focus that this is probably the most sensible way forward for this technology.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abiola Oyatobo ◽  
Amalachukwu Muoghalu ◽  
Chinaza Ikeokwu ◽  
Wilson Ekpotu

Abstract Ineffective methods of increasing oil recovery have been one of the challenges, whose solutions are constantly sought after in the oil and gas industry as the number of under-produced reservoirs increases daily. Water injection is the most extended technology to increase oil recovery, although excessive water production can pose huge damage ranging from the loss of the well to an increase in cost and capital investment requirement of surface facilities to handle the produced water. To mitigate these challenges and encourage the utilization of local contents, locally produced polymers were used in polymer flooding as an Enhanced Oil Recovery approach to increase the viscosity of the injected fluids for better profile control and reduce cost when compared with foreign polymers as floppan. Hence this experimental research was geared towards increasing the efficiency of oil displacement in sandstone reservoirs using locally sourced polymers in Nigeria and also compared the various polymers for optimum efficiency. Starch, Ewedu, and Gum Arabic were used in flooding an already obtained core samples and comparative analysis of this shows that starch yielded the highest recovery due to higher viscosity value as compared to Ewedu with the lowest mobility ratio to Gum Arabic. Finally, the concentration of Starch or Gum Arabic should be increased for optimum recovery.


Author(s):  
Sorin Alexandru Gheorghiu ◽  
Cătălin Popescu

The present economic model is intended to provide an example of how to take into consideration risks and uncertainties in the case of a field that is developed with water injection. The risks and uncertainties are related, on one hand to field operations (drilling time, delays due to drilling problems, rig failures and materials supply, electric submersible pump [ESP] installations failures with the consequences of losing the well), and on the other hand, the second set of uncertainties are related to costs (operational expenditures-OPEX and capital expenditures-CAPEX, daily drilling rig costs), prices (oil, gas, separation, and water injection preparation), production profiles, and discount factor. All the calculations are probabilistic. The authors are intending to provide a comprehensive solution for assessing the business performance of an oil field development.


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