Impact of shale on properties and oil recovery potential of sandstone formation for low‐salinity waterflooding applications

Abstract

Porous and permeable formation, namely, sandstone, may also contain water-reactive clays that swell in the presence of water and cause damage to formation by reducing its permeability. The inclusion of salts in injected water (called low-salinity water) is considered successful to inhibit shale swelling. Therefore, this study reports the impact of shale content (0-25%) on porous and permeable sand-packs in the presence of fresh water and salt solutions (KCl/CaCl2, 0-4 wt%). The properties of sand-packs were found to be significantly affected by shale; porosity reduced by~34% with 25% of shale, whereas permeability could not be measured due to no flow. KCl addition was relatively favorable as 2 wt% KCl offered least impact of shale on sand-pack properties. Interestingly, sand-pack that exhibited no permeability in water recovered significant permeability in the presence of KCl of 2 wt%.As a result, the oil recoveries of sand-packs were higher than the ones with water, and moreover, sand-pack with 25% shale content showed 27% original oil in place, which was negligible in presence of water. Thus, the study concludes that a salt solution of 2 wt% KCl can be very effective in shaly sandstone that faces challenges in conventional water flooding applications.

Investigation of the applicability of TiO2, BiVO4, and WO3 nanomaterials for advanced photocatalytic membranes used for oil‐in‐water emulsion separation

“…Increasing amounts of oily wastewaters are produced all over the world by several industrial activities (such as oil refining and metal and food industries 1,2 ) and also during the continuous cleaning of the increasing amount of registered vehicles—it is estimated to be 2 billion until 2035 3,4 . These wastewaters contain several contaminations that has been proven to pose serious risks to both the natural environment and human health 5–7 .…”

Impact of Low Salinity Water Injection on CO2 Storage and Oil Recovery for Improved CO2 Utilization

“…To characterize the sand particles, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and XRD (X-ray diffraction) analysis were performed. The results of SEM and XRD analysis are provided in our previous studies (Chaturvedi et al, 2019b;Goswami et al, 2018). From the obtained micrographs of SEM, it was established that the sand particles used were of the size 200-380 mm.…”

“…Literature studies on LSW have shown an increase in oil recovery by 8-20% over conventional water flooding. In addition, water-induced swelling of shale particles can be reduced by tuning the concentration of salt ions, which will make shaly-sandstone (an unconventional rock) more productive through the improvement in its petro-physical properties (Chaturvedi et al, 2019b).…”

Investigation of SiO2 Nanoparticle Retention in Flow Channels, Its Remediation Using Surfactants and Relevance of Artificial Intelligence in the Future

“…The sand used in this study had a uniform size which ranged from 200-380 µm. These fabricated sand packs closely resemble the oil reservoirs of sandstone origin and are hence most apt for this study [6,31]. The sand used in this study was characterized using an XRD machine (X-Ray Diffractometer D8 Advance, Bruker, India) and the mineral composition of the sand was defined as quartz (88 wt%), kaolinite (6 wt%), feldspar (2 wt%) and chlorite (1 wt%) [32].…”