Wettability Alteration of Quartz Surface by Low-Salinity Surfactant Nanofluids at High-Pressure and High-Temperature Conditions

Abstract

Advanced low-salinity aqueous formulations have shown promising results for rock wettability modification and interfacial tension reduction. Additives, such as surfactant and nanoparticles, can be used for such formulations. The interaction of these novel formulations with different fluid phases and the rock surface is, however, yet to be understood in detail. Thus, an experimental study was conducted in this study to investigate the interfacial tension and wettability of carbon dioxide and anionic surfactant (SDBS, 1.435 mM) at high pressure and temperature. The results show that the anionic surfactant (SDBS, 1.435 mM) augmented the effect of zirconia (ZrO 2 ) nanoparticles (100−2000 mg/L concentration) at low-salinity conditions and proved to be an effective wettability and interfacial tension modifier when used at appropriate divalent cation/sulfate ion ratios. Low-salinity surfactant nanofluids may thus be applied for wettability alteration and interfacial tension reduction for recovering residual oil, carbon dioxide-enhanced oil recovery, as well as carbon dioxide geosequestration. We also demonstrate in this study that the ratio of divalent cations to sulfate ions (0 ≤ M 2+ /SO 4 2− ≤ 4.427) has a significant role in interfacial tension reduction and wettability modification. We further show using contact angle wettability measurements that initial weak water− wet quartz surfaces can turn to more water−wet when zirconia nanoparticles used in the low-salinity formulation are in the range of 100−1000 mg/L. Interestingly, further incremental nanoparticle concentration decreases the water wettability but further reduces the carbon dioxide/brine interfacial tension.

The effect of nanoparticles on reservoir wettability alteration: a critical review

“…Moreover, the ability of nanoparticles to enhance oil recovery with different wettability conditions has been investigated. For instance, ZrO 2 nanofluid has stable performance in altering the wettability on the quartz surface to strongly water wet and improved the oil recovery better than conventional chemical methods (Jha et al 2019).…”

In Situ Wettability Investigation of Aging of Sandstone Surface in Alkane via X-ray Microtomography

“…The wettability of the rock surfaces is related to the hydrophilicity (or hydrophobicity) of the aqueous phase in an aqueous/nonaqueous phase liquid/rock three-phase system [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]. This is generally determined by the contact angle between the rock surface and the fluid [2,3,[8][9][10]. The wettability, by the mechanism of intermolecular forces between fluids and solids, induces capillary forces and strongly influences the fluid displacements, which is crucial to the oil recovery from the Earth's subsurface reservoirs, CO 2 geosequestration, groundwater remediation, etc.…”

“…The wettability, by the mechanism of intermolecular forces between fluids and solids, induces capillary forces and strongly influences the fluid displacements, which is crucial to the oil recovery from the Earth's subsurface reservoirs, CO 2 geosequestration, groundwater remediation, etc. [1,2,7,9,[11][12][13][14][15][16]. In general, understanding wettability is a key to understand various colloidal and interfacial phenomena in nature and technology at various length and time scales [1,2,6,7,[17][18][19][20][21][22][23].…”

“…For instance, wettability measurements are carried out using the United States Bureau of Mines (USBM), Amott, and Amott-Harvey methods when cylindrical rock core plugs are used [1], whereas measurements of contact angle through sessile drop methods gives leverage on the choice of a range of pressure and temperatures when a rock plate/thin section (rock representative surface) is used [2,3]. Wettability of a flat and homogeneous solid surface can be given by Young's equation based on thermodynamics, while surface heterogeneity and three-phase contact line dynamics contribute to wetting hysteresis [2,4,6,24]. Both the processes have their pros and cons, but former methods are mostly used to determine wettability when reservoir scale heterogeneities and thermodynamics are taken into consideration [1].…”

Effect of Nanoparticles on Viscosity and Interfacial Tension of Aqueous Surfactant Solutions at High Salinity and High Temperature

“…Recently, it was shown that the inclusion of nanoparticles into surfactant solutions affected their properties (Cheraghian and Hendraningrat, ; Khalafi et al, ; Ogolo et al, ), including viscosity (Rudyak and Krasnolutskii, ), wettability alteration effectiveness (Jha et al, , b; Nwidee et al, ), and interfacial and surface tension reduction (Dong and Johnson, ; Zargartalebi et al, ). Due to this, nanoparticles–surfactant solutions (surfactant nanofluids) have been regarded as potential formulations for improving the surfactant flooding EOR (Jha et al, , b; Joonaki and Ghanaatian, ).…”