Summary Chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) leads to substantial incremental costs over waterflooding of oil reservoirs. Reservoirs containing oil with a high total acid number (TAN) could be produced by the injection of alkali. Alkali might lead to the generation of soaps and emulsify the oil. However, the generated emulsions are not always stable. Phase experiments are used to determine the initial amount of emulsions generated and their stability if measured over time. On the basis of the phase experiments, the minimum concentration of alkali can be determined and the concentration of alkali above which no significant increase in the formation of initial emulsions is observed. Micromodel experiments are performed to investigate the effects on the pore scale. For the injection of alkali into high-TAN oils, the mobilization of residual oil after waterflooding is seen. The oil mobilization results from the breaking up of oil ganglia or the movement of elongated ganglia through the porous medium. As the oil is depleting in surface-active components, residual oil saturation is left behind either as isolated ganglia or in the down gradient side of grains. Simultaneous injection of alkali and polymers leads to a higher incremental oil production in the micromodels owing to larger pressure drops over the oil ganglia and more-effective mobilization accordingly. Coreflood tests confirm the micromodel experiments, and additional data are derived from these tests. Alkali/cosolvent/polymer (ACP) injection leads to the highest incremental oil recovery of the chemical agents, which is difficult to differentiate in micromodel experiments. The polymer adsorption is substantially reduced if alkali is injected with polymers compared with polymer injection only. The reason is the effect of the pH on the polymers. As in the micromodels, the incremental oil recovery is also higher for alkali/polymer (AP) injection than with alkali injection only. To evaluate the incremental operating costs of the chemical agents, equivalent utility factors (EqUFs) are calculated. The EqUF takes the costs of the various chemicals into account. The lowest EqUF and, hence, the lowest chemical incremental operating expenditures are incurred by the injection of Na2CO3; however, the highest incremental recovery factor is seen with ACP injection. It should be noted that the incremental oil recovery owing to macroscopic-sweep-efficiency improvement by the polymer needs to be accounted for to assess the efficiency of the chemical agents.
Most of the crude oil is already recovered and discovering new oilfields tend to be challenging and difficult. Implementing an EOR method is essential to enhance the production life of mature oil fields and to make them economically more attractive. Especially, for heavy oil reservoirs chemical flooding is besides thermal methods promising. Only a limited number of alkali flood projects alone are reported worldwide. Phase screening represents the first step of experiments and gives information about the ability of various alkali solutions to generate in-situ surfactants at different concentration ranges. In this study, carbonate-based alkalis were screened on their effect on in-situ soap generation. Two oil reservoirs both located in the Matzen oil field (Austria) were observed, where an alkali flood project will be realized in the near future. In lab scale, were phase experiments with various concentrations of carbonate-based alkalis (sodium and potassium carbonate) screened at the water-oil-ratio 5:5. Formulations with synthetic and real softened brine were compared, using dead oil and viscosity-matched oil with cyclohexane. Samples were observed over time (100 days) to figure out their equilibrium at reservoir temperature. Afterwards large-scale samples were prepared and viscosity measurements performed. Potassium carbonate (K2CO3) is not well investigated in the literature as an alkali agent yet. It showed very promising results in all performed trials and generated remarkably more amounts of in-situ surfactants compared to Na2CO3, which is the most frequently used alkali performer. Additionally, in most concentrations the micro emulsion viscosities were lower. Thus, potassium carbonate might be an interesting candidate in future alkali applications.
Nowadays, the injection of dilute hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) solutions after water flooding operations is a promising tertiary recovery method. However, the treatment of produced water containing breakthrough polymer plays a challenging aspect in the oil and gas industry. Ensuring good filterability of the produced water for further usage, either pressure maintenance or EOR application, is still a critical issue. Polymer loads in the produced water need to be expected, which can massively influence the separation efficiency of the water treatment system. Especially, the handling of polymer-containing water streams and finding the appropriate technology for the treatment, chemically or mechanically, has a decisive influence on performing a full-field roll out of polymer flooding activities. Aim of this work was to study the impact of back-produced polymer on the water treatment process and to reach the desired injection water quality. Therefore a water treatment plant in pilot scale was used. The unit simulates the main process steps of the water treatment plant Schönkirchen in the Vienna Basin (corrugated plate interceptor, dissolved gas flotation unit, and nutshell filter). The maximum back-produced polymer concentration, which can be handled within the system, was determined. Two different chemical sets (coagulant and flocculant) were tested, regarding their oil and solids removal ability, in presence of different polymer concentrations. At the end of the field study, one of these chemical sets was found, having a hydrocarbon removal efficiency of around 99% in presence of 30 ppm HPAM inlet concentration. Using this set, good removal efficiency and no plugging of the nutshell filter was observed even at high polymer concentrations. The other set led to plugging of the filtration system at relative low polymer concentrations of 8 ppm HPAM and the removal efficiency of hydrocarbons as well as polymer was poor. Based on these results, it can be assumed that the processes of the water treatment plant Schönkirchen are not negatively affected in the presence of up to 30 ppm polymer load in the inlet water stream.
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