Screening of mixed surfactant systems: Phase behavior studies and CT imaging of surfactant-enhanced oil recovery experiments
A systematic chemical screening study was conducted on selected anionic-nonionic and nonionic-nonionic systems. The objective of the study was to evaluate and determine combinations of these surfactants that would exhibit favorable phase behavior and solubilization capacity. The effects of different parameters including (a) salinity, (b) temperature, (c) alkane carbon number, (c) hydrophilic/lipophilic balance (HLB) of nonionic component, and (d) type of surfactant on the behavior of the overall chemical system were evaluated. The current work was conducted using a series of ethoxylated nonionic surfactants in combinations of several anionic systems with various hydrocarbons. Efforts to correlate the behavior of these mixed systems led to the development of several models for the chemical systems tested. The models were used to compare the different systems and provided some guidelines for formulating them to account for variations in salinity, oil hydrocarbon number, and temperature. The models were also evaluated to determine conformance with the results from experimental measurements. The models provided good agreement with experimental results. X-ray computed tomography (CT) was used to study fluid distributions during chemical enhanced oil recovery experiments. CT-monitored corefloods were conducted to examine the effect of changing surfactant slug size injection on oil bank formation and propagation. Reducing surfactant slug size resulted in lower total oil production. Oil recovery results, however, did not correlate with slug size for the low-concentration, alkaline, mixed surfactant system used in these tests. The CT measurements showed that polymer mobility control and core features also affected the overall oil recovery results.
- Research Organization:
- National Inst. for Petroleum and Energy Research, Bartlesville, OK (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC22-83FE60149
- OSTI ID:
- 10108854
- Report Number(s):
- NIPER-710; ON: DE94000105; BR: 35AA15000/35AA20000
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Nov 1993
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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37 INORGANIC
ORGANIC
PHYSICAL AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
WATERFLOODING
ADDITIVES
BENCH-SCALE EXPERIMENTS
SURFACTANTS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
OIL WELLS
PHASE STUDIES
PETROLEUM
ENHANCED RECOVERY
MIXTURES
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
PETROLEUM SULFONATES
PHENOLS
DRILL CORES
COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHY
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
020300
400201
DRILLING AND PRODUCTION
CHEMICAL AND PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES