Application of Internal Olefin Sulfonates and Other Surfactants to EOR. Part 1: Structure - Performance Relationships for Selection at Different Reservoir Conditions

Barnes, Julian Richard; Dirkzwager, Henk; Smit, Jasper; Smit, Johan; On, An; Navarrete, R.C.; Ellison, B.C.; Buijse, Marten

doi:10.2118/129766-ms

Cited by 80 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Details of the IOS chemistry and manufacturing processes are available in earlier publications [25,28]. The hydrophobes used to manufacture the IOSs employed Shell's existing plant and processes that are used to manufacture surfactants for the consumer and industrial markets.…”

Section: Synthesis/manufacture Of Surfactantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Essentials of Upscaling Surfactants for EOR Field Projects

et al. 2016

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Surfactant flooding is an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique that involves the injection of an aqueous solution of surfactant (and, optionally, alkaline and polymer) into an oil reservoir to mobilise and produce the remaining oil. The quantities of surfactants needed for pilots and future commercial scale projects are large (100s to 10,000s of tons) and necessitate large scale manufacture using existing processes and plants for the different manufacturing steps. Upscaling of surfactants requires a rigorous QA/QC process to control and ensure the quality of batches of surfactants produced. Case studies are described from the perspective of a surfactant manufacturer where 800 and 6000 ton of surfactant were manufactured (as 60% and 20% active concentrates respectively) for two multi spot pilots. These case studies illustrate:• The need to define the laboratory tests for surfactant composition and performance. Plus associated repeatability data and specifications (minimum and maximum values) for clear, unambiguous decisions. • How the QC is checked at each stage in manufacture from the initial feedstock, through various stages, to the final delivered surfactant concentrate/blend. This also applies to the scale-up procedure from the laboratory made scale (kg) to pilot scale (100s of kg) to the pilot/commercial scale (100s to 1000s of tons). • Novel correlations between composition and performance (e.g. optimal salinity, via oil/water phase behaviour tests), developed during the surfactant pilot scale manufacture stage, to a) put more emphasis on verifying batch consistency with faster, easier to use composition tests, and b) give more assurance that large scale production gives the expected sub-surface performance. This requires R&D over an extended time, ahead of large scale manufacture.Overall, the paper shows that industrial scale production of surfactants for chemical EOR is feasible and goes through the essential steps to achieve this. Control of large scale batch quality and performance is critical. This paper also shows results for improved, highly active (60%ϩ) surfactants concentrates with improved rheology behaviour which will be easier to pump, mix and dilute at the facilities than earlier products. This helps to reduce logistical costs thereby improving project economics.

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Section: Synthesis/manufacture Of Surfactantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An earlier paper gave the chemistry and manufacturing steps to make these two classes of surfactants [25]. A recent paper in 2015 summarised the combined Shell Chemicals and Upstream approach to carrying out QA/QC of the upscaled surfactants [26].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Essentials of Upscaling Surfactants for EOR Field Projects

et al. 2016

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“…Using ethylene as the initial building block, produced by cracking either naphtha (ex crude oil) or ethane (ex natural gas), specific internal olefin carbon fraction feedstocks are obtained from the Shell Higher Olefin Process (SHOP). The generalized structures of the IOS family of surfactants are shown in Figure 1 Production of internal olefin sulfonates has been discussed in detail in previous work 4 and generally consists of three process steps: sulfonation, neutralization and hydrolysis. Briefly, during sulfonation, internal olefins react with SO 3 in a falling film reactor and form a range of cyclic intermediates known as beta, gamma and delta-sultones, as well as alkene sulfonic acids.…”

Section: Manufacture Of Sulfonatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An extensive body of previous work by researchers in the field has described how surfactants are matched to particular reservoir conditions 1-6 , and how suitable surfactants can be commercially manufactured and scaled up for large-scale EOR projects 4 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A New Approach to Deliver Highly Concentrated Surfactants for Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery

et al. 2012

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A novel process has been developed to produce highly concentrated forms of surfactants suitable for chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (cEOR) in the form of powders. Powders are advantageous for cEOR applications because, through their lower water content (typically 3%), they have the potential to reduce transportation costs and simplify the logistics of transporting surfactants from the production location to field locations.Data are presented showing the properties and advantages of powder cEOR surfactants and how they compare to the more conventional liquid form of surfactants. The manufacturing route first involves the preparation of higher active matter liquids (around 70% active) that are subsequently converted into powders using dedicated, standard mixing equipment, the same type used for the manufacture of laundry powders. In this work, several surfactant powders were produced on a pilot plant scale using a number of internal olefin sulfonates to establish applicability for different cEOR projects. The blended powders are agglomerates of surfactant and sodium carbonate and were made both with and without polymer (termed ASP and AS powders respectively). The AS and ASP powders were found to easily dissolve in brine, eliminating the need for special field equipment for dissolution, and gave faster polymer dissolution in water compared with dissolving the polymer as a separate component. The powders have acceptable physical properties that facilitate transport and dispersion in brine and have been tested at desired ratios of surfactant to alkali. This paper also outlines how higher active matter liquids can be manufactured to avoid gel phases, improve their handleability and lower their viscosity.The surfactant powder approach has the potential to substantially reduce costs for full scale chemical EOR projects where large chemical volumes are manufactured, transported, stored and injected.

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“…12 Statistical parameters (determination coefficient, R²) were reported only for data fitting (R²= 0.95), no external validation was performed which does not allow one to draw any conclusion on predictive performance of this model on new data.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prediction of Optimal Salinities for Surfactant Formulations Using a Quantitative Structure–Property Relationships Approach

Muller

Maldonado

Varnek³

et al. 2015

Energy Fuels

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Each oil reservoir could be characterized by a set of parameters such as temperature, pressure, oil composition, and brine salinity, etc. In the context of the chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR), the selection of high performance surfactants is a challenging and time-consuming task since this strongly depends on the reservoir’s conditions. The situation becomes even more complicated if the surfactant formulation is a blend of two or more surfactants. In the present work, we report quantitative structure–property relationships (QSPR) correlating surfactants’ structures and their composition in a mixture with optimal salinity (S opt), corresponding to minimal interfacial tension in the reference brine/surfactants/n-dodecane system, at T = 313 K and P = 0.1 MPa. Particular attention was paid to selected families of surfactants: α-olefin sulfonate (AOS), internal olefin sulfonate (IOS), alkyl ether sulfate (AES), and alkyl glyceryl ether sulfonate (AGES). The models were built and validated on the database containing S opt values for 75 surfactants’ formulations. Molecular structures of amphiphilic molecules were encoded by functional group count descriptors (FGCD), ISIDA substructural molecular fragment (SMF) descriptors, and CODESSA molecular descriptors (CMD). For mixtures, descriptors were calculated as linear combinations of descriptors of individual compounds weighted by their mass fractions in mixtures. Different machine-learning methodssupport vector machine (SVM), partial least-squares (PLS) regression, and random subspace (RS)have been used for the modeling. Both global (on the entire database) and local (on individual families) models have been built. Models display reasonable accuracy (about 0.2 log S opt units) which is comparable with the experimental error of measured S opt. Our results show that the suggested approach can be successfully used to build predictive models for relatively small data sets of mixtures of chemical compounds.

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Application of Internal Olefin Sulfonates and Other Surfactants to EOR. Part 1: Structure - Performance Relationships for Selection at Different Reservoir Conditions

Cited by 80 publications

References 7 publications

Essentials of Upscaling Surfactants for EOR Field Projects

Essentials of Upscaling Surfactants for EOR Field Projects

A New Approach to Deliver Highly Concentrated Surfactants for Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery

Prediction of Optimal Salinities for Surfactant Formulations Using a Quantitative Structure–Property Relationships Approach

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