A New Hybrid Improved and Enhanced Oil Recovery IOR/EOR Process Using Smart Water Assisted Foam SWAF Flooding in Carbonate Rocks; A Laboratory Study Approach

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anas. M. Hassan ◽  
Mohammed Ayoub ◽  
Mysara Eissa ◽  
Hans Bruining ◽  
Abdullah Al-Mansour ◽  
...  

Abstract Given the increasing demand for energy globally and depleting oil and gas resources, it is crucial to increase the production from existing reservoirs by introducing new technologies for Improved/Enhanced Oil Recovery (IOR/EOR). This contribution presents a novel hybrid IOR/EOR method, which combines smart water (SW) and foam flooding, known as Smart Water Assisted Foam (SWAF) flooding. The optimal conditions of the SWAF technology will be interpreted using experimental laboratory design (i.e., experimental data). The experimental design was divided into three main steps. The first step is obtaining rock wettability measurements using contact angle measurements. This step aims to select the optimum SW composition that changes the carbonate rock's wettability from oil-wet towards more water-wet and faster oil recoveries. The water-wet condition leads to high residual oil saturations and low end-point permeabilities. This is conductive to favourable mobility ratios and efficient water-oil displacement. However, high residual oil saturations are unfavourable to the high ultimate oil recovery as much oil stays behind. Secondly, the chemical screening follows, where two tests were performed, viz., (i) an Aqueous Stability Test (AST), (ii) and a Foamability and Foam Stability Tests (FT/FST). This step aims to generate a stable foam (i.e., surfactant aqueous solution + gas) in the absence and presence of crude oil with different TAN (Total Acid Number) and TBN (Total Base Number), viz., crude oils Type-A and Type-B. Favourable mobility ratio is achieved by the presence of foam, which leads to excellent displacement efficiency. Thirdly, core flooding tests are performed. This step aims to select the best formulations through SWAF core flooding tests to obtain the ultimate recovery factor under different injection scenarios. The optimal SWAF condition combines high ultimate recovery with the best displacement efficiency. It is shown that the enormous changes in wettability were seen for SW (MgCl2) solution at 3500 (ppm) for both crude oils Type-A and Type-B. It has been shown that the use of a cationic surfactant CTAB (i.e., cetyltrimethylammonium-bromide) in the positively charged carbonates (with an isoelectric point of pH = 9) is more effective than the use of anionic surfactant, e.g., Alpha Olefin Sulfonate (AOS). The aim is to create an optimum surfactant aqueous solution (SAS). The SAS stability is considerably affected by the concentration of both the SW (MgCl2) and surfactant (CTAB). In the absence of oil, the strength of foam (SAS and Gas) is highly dependent on the concentration and composition of the SW in the SAS. In the presence of oil, foam generation and stability are better when the crude oil has a low TAN and high TBN. From the core flooding tests for crude oils Type-A and Type-B, the ultimate residual oil recovery was achieved by the MgCl2 - foam injection combination (i.e., incremental oil recovery of 42%, which is equivalent to a cumulative oil recovery of 92%). In summary, SWAF under the optimum conditions is a promising method to increase the oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongsheng Tan ◽  
Qi Li ◽  
Liang Xu ◽  
Xiaoyan Zhang ◽  
Tao Yu

<p>The wettability, fingering effect and strong heterogeneity of carbonate reservoirs lead to low oil recovery. However, carbon dioxide (CO<sub>2</sub>) displacement is an effective method to improve oil recovery for carbonate reservoirs. Saturated CO<sub>2</sub> nanofluids combines the advantages of CO<sub>2</sub> and nanofluids, which can change the reservoir wettability and improve the sweep area to achieve the purpose of enhanced oil recovery (EOR), so it is a promising technique in petroleum industry. In this study, comparative experiments of CO<sub>2</sub> flooding and saturated CO<sub>2</sub> nanofluids flooding were carried out in carbonate reservoir cores. The nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) instrument was used to clarify oil distribution during core flooding processes. For the CO<sub>2</sub> displacement experiment, the results show that viscous fingering and channeling are obvious during CO<sub>2</sub> flooding, the oil is mainly produced from the big pores, and the residual oil is trapped in the small pores. For the saturated CO<sub>2</sub> nanofluids displacement experiment, the results show that saturated CO<sub>2</sub> nanofluids inhibit CO<sub>2</sub> channeling and fingering, the oil is produced from the big pores and small pores, the residual oil is still trapped in the small pores, but the NMR signal intensity of the residual oil is significantly reduced. The final oil recovery of saturated CO<sub>2</sub> nanofluids displacement is higher than that of CO<sub>2</sub> displacement. This study provides a significant reference for EOR in carbonate reservoirs. Meanwhile, it promotes the application of nanofluids in energy exploitation and CO<sub>2</sub> utilization.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xia Yin ◽  
Tianyi Zhao ◽  
Jie Yi

Abstract The water channeling and excess water production led to the decreasing formation energy in the oilfield. Therefore, the combined flooding with dispersed particle gel (DPG) and surfactant was conducted for conformance control and enhanced oil recovery in a high temperature (100-110°C) high salinity (>2.1×105mg/L) channel reservoir of block X in Tahe oilfield. This paper reports the experimental results and pilot test for the combined flooding in a well group of Block X. In the experiment part, the interfacial tension, emulsifying capacity of the surfactant and the particle size during aging of DPG were measured, then, the conformance control and enhanced oil recovery performance of the combined flooding was evaluated by core flooding experiment. In the pilot test, the geological backgrounds and developing history of the block was introduced. Then, an integrated study of EOR and conformance control performance in the block X are analyzed by real-time monitoring and performance after treatment. In addition, the well selection criteria and flooding optimization were clarified. In this combined flooding, DPG is applied as in-depth conformance control agent to increase the sweep efficiency, and surfactant solution slug following is used for improve the displacement efficiency. The long term stability of DPG for 15 days ensures the efficiency of in-depth conformance control and its size can increase from its original 0.543μm to 35.5μm after aging for 7 days in the 2.17×105mg/L reservoir water and at 110°C. In the optimization, it is found that 0.35% NAC-1+ 0.25% NAC-2 surfactant solution with interfacial tension 3.2×10-2mN/m can form a relatively stable emulsion easily with the dehydrated crude oil. In the double core flooding, the conformance control performance is confirmed by the diversion of fluid after combined flooding and EOR increases by 21.3%. After exploitation of Block X for 14 years, the fast decreasing formation energy due to lack of large bottom water and water fingering resulted in a decreasing production rate and increasing watercut. After combined flooding in Y well group with 1 injector and 3 producers, the average dynamic liquid level, daily production, and tracing agent breakthrough time increased, while the watercut and infectivity index decreased. The distribution rate of injected fluid and real-time monitoring also assured the conformance control performance. The oil production of this well group was increased by over 3000 tons. Upon this throughout study of combined flooding from experiment to case study, adjusting the heterogeneity by DPG combined with increasing displacement efficiency of surfactant enhanced the oil recovery synergistically in this high salinity high temperature reservoir. The criteria for the selection and performance of combined flooding also provides practical experiences and principles for combined flooding.


Polymers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 4212
Author(s):  
Mohamed Said ◽  
Bashirul Haq ◽  
Dhafer Al Shehri ◽  
Mohammad Mizanur Rahman ◽  
Nasiru Salahu Muhammed ◽  
...  

Tertiary oil recovery, commonly known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR), is performed when secondary recovery is no longer economically viable. Polymer flooding is one of the EOR methods that improves the viscosity of injected water and boosts oil recovery. Xanthan gum is a relatively cheap biopolymer and is suitable for oil recovery at limited temperatures and salinities. This work aims to modify xanthan gum to improve its viscosity for high-temperature and high-salinity reservoirs. The xanthan gum was reacted with acrylic acid in the presence of a catalyst in order to form xanthan acrylate. The chemical structure of the xanthan acrylate was verified by FT-IR and NMR analysis. The discovery hybrid rheometer (DHR) confirmed that the viscosity of the modified xanthan gum was improved at elevated temperatures, which was reflected in the core flood experiment. Two core flooding experiments were conducted using six-inch sandstone core plugs and Arabian light crude oil. The first formulation—the xanthan gum with 3% NaCl solution—recovered 14% of the residual oil from the core. In contrast, the modified xanthan gum with 3% NaCl solution recovered about 19% of the residual oil, which was 5% higher than the original xanthan gum. The xanthan gum acrylate is therefore more effective at boosting tertiary oil recovery in the sandstone core.


2012 ◽  
Vol 594-597 ◽  
pp. 2451-2454
Author(s):  
Feng Lan Zhao ◽  
Ji Rui Hou ◽  
Shi Jun Huang

CO2is inclined to dissolve in crude oil in the reservoir condition and accordingly bring the changes in the crude oil composition, which will induce asphaltene deposition and following formation damage. In this paper, core flooding device is applied to study the effect of asphaltene deposition on flooding efficiency. From the flooding results, dissolution of CO2into oil leads to recovery increase because of crude oil viscosity reduction. But precipitated asphaltene particles may plug the pores and throats, which will make the flooding effects worse. Under the same experimental condition and with equivalent crude oil viscosity, the recovery of oil with higher proportion of precipitated asphaltene was relatively lower during the CO2flooding, so the asphltene precipitation would affect CO2displacement efficiSubscript textency and total oil recovery to some extent. Combination of static diffusion and dynamic oil flooding would provide basic parameters for further study of the CO2flooding mechanism and theoretical evidence for design of CO2flooding programs and forecasting of asphaltene deposition.


Author(s):  
Fengqi Tan ◽  
Changfu Xu ◽  
Yuliang Zhang ◽  
Gang Luo ◽  
Yukun Chen ◽  
...  

The special sedimentary environments of conglomerate reservoir lead to pore structure characteristics of complex modal, and the reservoir seepage system is mainly in the “sparse reticular-non reticular” flow pattern. As a result, the study on microscopic seepage mechanism of water flooding and polymer flooding and their differences becomes the complex part and key to enhance oil recovery. In this paper, the actual core samples from conglomerate reservoir in Karamay oilfield are selected as research objects to explore microscopic seepage mechanisms of water flooding and polymer flooding for hydrophilic rock as well as lipophilic rock by applying the Computed Tomography (CT) scanning technology. After that, the final oil recovery models of conglomerate reservoir are established in two displacement methods based on the influence analysis of oil displacement efficiency. Experimental results show that the seepage mechanisms of water flooding and polymer flooding for hydrophilic rock are all mainly “crawling” displacement along the rock surface while the weak lipophilic rocks are all mainly “inrushing” displacement along pore central. Due to the different seepage mechanisms among the water flooding and the polymer flooding, the residual oil remains in hydrophilic rock after water flooding process is mainly distributed in fine throats and pore interchange. These residual oil are cut into small droplets under the influence of polymer solution with stronger shearing drag effect. Then, those small droplets pass well through narrow throats and move forward along with the polymer solution flow, which makes enhancing oil recovery to be possible. The residual oil in weak lipophilic rock after water flooding mainly distributed on the rock particle surface and formed oil film and fine pore-throat. The polymer solution with stronger shear stress makes these oil films to carry away from particle surface in two ways such as bridge connection and forming oil silk. Because of the essential attributes differences between polymer solution and injection water solution, the impact of Complex Modal Pore Structure (CMPS) on the polymer solution displacement and seepage is much smaller than on water flooding solution. Therefore, for the two types of conglomerate rocks with different wettability, the pore structure is the main controlling factor of water flooding efficiency, while reservoir properties oil saturation, and other factors have smaller influence on flooding efficiency although the polymer flooding efficiency has a good correlation with remaining oil saturation after water flooding. Based on the analysis on oil displacement efficiency factors, the parameters of water flooding index and remaining oil saturation after water flooding are used to establish respectively calculation models of oil recovery in water flooding stage and polymer flooding stage for conglomerate reservoir. These models are able to calculate the oil recovery values of this area controlled by single well control, and further to determine the oil recovery of whole reservoir in different displacement stages by leveraging interpolation simulation methods, thereby providing more accurate geological parameters for the fine design of displacement oil program.


2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Malek Jalilian ◽  
Peyman Pourafshary ◽  
Behnam Sedaee Sola ◽  
Mosayyeb Kamari

Designing smart water (SW) by optimizing the chemical composition of injected brine is a promising low-cost technique that has been developed for both sandstone and carbonate reservoirs for several decades. In this study, the impact of SW flooding during tertiary oil recovery phase was investigated by core flooding analysis of pure limestone carbonate rocks. Increasing the sulfate ion concentration by using CaSO4 and MgSO4 of NaCl concentration and finally reducing the total salinity were the main manipulations performed to optimize SW. The main objective of this research is to compare active cations including Ca2+ and Mg2+ in the presence of sulfate ions (SO42−) with regard to their efficiency in the enhancement of oil production during SW flooding of carbonate cores. The results revealed a 14.5% increase in the recovery factor by CaSO4 proving its greater effectiveness compared to MgSO4, which led to an 11.5% production enhancement. It was also realized that low-salinity water flooding (LSWF) did not lead to a significant positive effect as it contributed less than 2% in the tertiary stage.


SPE Journal ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (02) ◽  
pp. 237-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pingping Shen ◽  
Jialu Wang ◽  
Shiyi Yuan ◽  
Taixian Zhong ◽  
Xu Jia

Summary The fluid-flow mechanism of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in porous media by alkali/surfactant/polymer (ASP) flooding is investigated by measuring the production performance, pressure, and saturation distributions through the installed differential-pressure transducers and saturation-measurement probes in a physical model of a vertical heterogeneous reservoir. The fluid-flow variation in the reservoir is one of the main mechanisms of EOR of ASP flooding, and the nonlinear coupling and interaction between pressure and saturation fields results in the fluid-flow variation in the reservoir. In the vertical heterogeneous reservoir, the ASP agents flow initially in the high-permeability layer. Later, the flow direction changes toward the low- and middle-permeability layers because the resistance in the high-permeability layer increases on physical and chemical reactions such as adsorption, retention, and emulsion. ASP flooding displaces not only the residual oil in the high-permeability layer but also the remaining oil in the low- and middle-permeability layers by increasing both swept volume and displacement efficiency. Introduction Currently, most oil fields in China are in the later production period and the water cut increases rapidly, even to more than 80%. Waterflooding no longer meets the demands of oilfield production. Thus, it is inevitable that a new technology will replace waterflooding. The new technique of ASP flooding has been developed on the basis of alkali-, surfactant-, and polymer-flooding research in the late 1980s. ASP flooding uses the benefits of the three flooding methods simultaneously, and oil recovery is greatly enhanced by decreasing interfacial tension (IFT), increasing the capillary number, enhancing microscopic displacing efficiency, improving the mobility ratio, and increasing macroscopic sweeping efficiency (Shen and Yu 2002; Wang et al. 2000; Wang et al. 2002; Sui et al. 2000). Recently, much intensive research has been done on ASP flooding both in China and worldwide, achieving some important accomplishments that lay a solid foundation for the extension of this technique to practical application in oil fields (Baviere et al. 1995; Thomas 2005; Yang et al. 2003; Li et al. 2003). In previous work, the ASP-flooding mechanism was studied visually by using a microscopic-scale model and double-pane glass models with sand (Liu et al. 2003; Zhang 1991). In these experiments, the water-viscosity finger, the residual-oil distribution after waterflooding, and the oil bank formed by microscopic emulsion flooding were observed. In Tong et al. (1998) and Guo (1990), deformation, threading, emulsion (oil/water), and strapping were observed as the main mechanisms of ASP flooding in a water-wetting reservoir, while the interface-producing emulsion (oil/water), bridging between inner pore and outer pore, is the main mechanism of ASP flooding in an oil-wetting reservoir. For a vertical heterogeneous reservoir, ASP flooding increases displacement efficiency by displacing residual oil through decreased IFT, simultaneously improving sweep efficiency by extending the swept area in both vertical and horizontal directions. Some physical and chemical phenomena, such as emulsion, scale deposition, and chromatographic separation, occur during ASP flooding (Arihara et al. 1999; Guo 1999). Because ASP flooding in porous media involves many complicated physicochemical properties, many oil-recovery mechanisms still need to be investigated. Most research has been performed on the microscopic displacement mechanism of ASP flooding, while the fluid-flow mechanism in porous media at the macroscopic scale lacks sufficient study. In this paper, a vertical-heterogeneous-reservoir model is established, and differential-pressure transducers and saturation-measuring probes are installed. The fluid-flow mechanism of increasing both macroscopic sweep efficiency and microscopic displacement efficiency is studied by measuring the production performance and the variation of pressure and saturation distributions in the ASP-flooding experiment. An experimental database of ASP flooding also is set up and provides an experimental base for numerical simulation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-90
Author(s):  
Yani Faozani Alli ◽  
Edward ML Tobing ◽  
Usman Usman

The formation of microemulsion in the injection of surfactant at chemical flooding is crucial for the effectiveness of injection. Microemulsion can be obtained either by mixing the surfactant and oil at the surface or injecting surfactant into the reservoir to form in situ microemulsion. Its translucent homogeneous mixtures of oil and water in the presence of surfactant is believed to displace the remaining oil in the reservoir. Previously, we showed the effect of microemulsion-based surfactant formulation to reduce the interfacial tension (IFT) of oil and water to the ultralow level that suffi cient enough to overcome the capillary pressure in the pore throat and mobilize the residual oil. However, the effectiveness of microemulsion flooding to enhance the oil recovery in the targeted representative core has not been investigated.In this article, the performance of microemulsion-based surfactant formulation to improve the oil recovery in the reservoir condition was investigated in the laboratory scale through the core flooding experiment. Microemulsion-based formulation consist of 2% surfactant A and 0.85% of alkaline sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) were prepared by mixing with synthetic soften brine (SSB) in the presence of various concentration of polymer for improving the mobility control. The viscosity of surfactant-polymer in the presence of alkaline (ASP) and polymer drive that used for chemical injection slug were measured. The tertiary oil recovery experiment was carried out using core flooding apparatus to study the ability of microemulsion-based formulation to recover the oil production. The results showed that polymer at 2200 ppm in the ASP mixtures can generate 12.16 cP solution which is twice higher than the oil viscosity to prevent the fi ngering occurrence. Whereas single polymer drive at 1300 ppm was able to produce 15.15 cP polymer solution due to the absence of alkaline. Core flooding experiment result with design injection of 0.15 PV ASP followed by 1.5 PV polymer showed that the additional oil recovery after waterflood can be obtained as high as 93.41% of remaining oil saturation after waterflood (Sor), or 57.71% of initial oil saturation (Soi). Those results conclude that the microemulsion-based surfactant flooding is the most effective mechanism to achieve the optimum oil recovery in the targeted reservoir.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 1318-1328
Author(s):  
Sara Habibi ◽  
Arezou Jafari ◽  
Zahra Fakhroueian

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%.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renyi Cao ◽  
Changwei Sun ◽  
Y. Zee Ma

Surface property of rock affects oil recovery during water flooding. Oil-wet polar substances adsorbed on the surface of the rock will gradually be desorbed during water flooding, and original reservoir wettability will change towards water-wet, and the change will reduce the residual oil saturation and improve the oil displacement efficiency. However there is a lack of an accurate description of wettability alternation model during long-term water flooding and it will lead to difficulties in history match and unreliable forecasts using reservoir simulators. This paper summarizes the mechanism of wettability variation and characterizes the adsorption of polar substance during long-term water flooding from injecting water or aquifer and relates the residual oil saturation and relative permeability to the polar substance adsorbed on clay and pore volumes of flooding water. A mathematical model is presented to simulate the long-term water flooding and the model is validated with experimental results. The simulation results of long-term water flooding are also discussed.


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