Improved Oil Recovery by Low-Salinity Waterflooding

Morrow, Norman R.; Buckley, Jill S.

doi:10.2118/129421-jpt

Cited by 489 publications

(269 citation statements)

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“…Much experimental work has been conducted to investigate the impact of low salinity water on wettability alteration, mainly focusing on spontaneous imbibition (Shehata and Nasr El-Din 2015;Wickramathilaka et al 2011) and core flooding experiments (Nasralla et al 2011;Morrow and Buckley 2011;Rivet et al 2010;Zahid et al 2012). It should be noted that an immersed core sample represents a matrix medium while the brine-filled gap between the core and glass acts as a fracture in the Amott test.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs by spontaneous imbibition of low salinity water

et al. 2018

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An experimental study was performed to investigate the impact of low salinity water on wettability alteration in carbonate core samples from southern Iranian reservoirs by spontaneous imbibition. In this paper, the effect of temperature, salinity, permeability and connate water were investigated by comparing the produced hydrocarbon curves. Contact angle measurements were taken to confirm the alteration of surface wettability of porous media. Oil recovery was enhanced by increasing the dilution ratio of sea water, and there existed an optimum dilution ratio at which the highest oil recovery was achieved. In addition, temperature had a very significant impact on oil recovery from carbonate rocks. Furthermore, oil recovery from a spontaneous imbibition process was directly proportional to the permeability of the core samples. The presence of connate water saturation inside the porous media facilitated oil production significantly. Also, the oil recovery from porous media was highly dependent on ion repulsion/attraction activity of the rock surface which directly impacts on the wettability conditions. Finally, the highest ion attraction percentage was measured for sodium while there was no significant change in pH for all experiments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs by spontaneous imbibition of low salinity water

et al. 2018

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“…, and SO 2À 4 ) enhances the water wettability of the rock. (5) Mineral dissolution (Morrow and Buckley 2011): the surface of the carbonate rock dissolves and the oil film is peeled off by the low-salinity water. (6) Double-layer expansion (Kuznetsov et al 2015): low-salinity water injection induces the electrical double layer to expand, reducing the attraction between the oil and pore surfaces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficiency of enhanced oil recovery by injection of low-salinity water in barium-containing carbonate reservoirs

Park

Lee

et al. 2018

Pet. Sci.

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When low-salinity water containing sulfate ions is injected into carbonate reservoirs, rock dissolution and in situ precipitation occur, altering rock permeability and wettability. Particularly, when barium ions are present in formation water, they react chemically with SO 2À 4 , and BaSO 4 is precipitated. These reactions can cause a serious impact on the efficiency of enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Therefore, the main purpose of this study was to identify EOR efficiency induced by lowsalinity waterflooding (LSWF) when Ba 2? is present in carbonate reservoirs. From the experimental results, it was confirmed that the permeability calculated by the measured pressure difference was improved because of rock dissolution predominating over in situ precipitation for the case of low Ba 2? concentrations. In the analysis of wettability alteration through the measurements of relative permeabilities before and after LSWF, the higher Ba 2? concentration case consumed more SO 2À 4 in precipitating the BaSO 4 , resulting in weaker wettability alteration due to the reduction of sulfate activity. These phenomena ultimately influenced EOR efficiency, i.e., the oil recovery was greater for the lower Ba 2? concentration.

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“…In recent twenty years, the successful practices of brine-modified flooding, including low salinity waterflooding (LSF) in sandstone [1][2][3][4][5][6] and seawater or modified seawater flooding in carbonate, 1,[7][8][9][10][11][12] have proved that ionic composition of the injected brine can significantly influence waterflooding efficiency. These new waterflooding strategies are economical and environment-friendly, and thus have attracted increasing interests from oil industry.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These new waterflooding strategies are economical and environment-friendly, and thus have attracted increasing interests from oil industry. The change of flooding efficiency by modifiedbrine is usually attributed to the dependence of wettability on brine ionic composition, 2,3,[12][13][14][15] which is denoted as ion-tuned wettability in this paper.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Molecular dynamics for ion-tuned wettability in oil/brine/rock systems

Tian

Wang

2017

AIP Advances

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The dependence of wettability on brine ionic composition in oil/brine/rock systems, which is denoted as ion-tuned wettability, has important applications in geoscience. Due to the involvement of non-continuum effects, molecular dynamics (MD) simulation is necessary to improve understanding of its mechanism. This work establishes a reliable molecular dynamics (MD) framework to study ion-tuned wettability. We prove that our model system can well represent the wettability of the real oil/brine/rock system, and that the wettability alteration from the MD results is qualitatively consistent with the EDL repulsion theory when ion-binding does not exist. In the process to establish the MD framework, our work suggests that adding counter ions to balance interface charges is good for studying concentration effect on wettability, and the contact angle defined from mass center coordinates is effective to measure the wettability of the nano-scale MD system. This work provides the basis for on-going studies using MD simulation to reveal the mechanism of ion-tuned wettability.

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Improved Oil Recovery by Low-Salinity Waterflooding

Cited by 489 publications

References 0 publications

Enhanced oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs by spontaneous imbibition of low salinity water

Enhanced oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs by spontaneous imbibition of low salinity water

Efficiency of enhanced oil recovery by injection of low-salinity water in barium-containing carbonate reservoirs

Molecular dynamics for ion-tuned wettability in oil/brine/rock systems

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