Alkaline assisted thermal oil recovery: Kinetic and displacement studies
This report deals with two major issues of chemical assisted flooding - the interaction of caustic, one of the proposed additives to steam flood, with the reservoir rock, and the displacement of oil by a chemical flood at elevated temperatures. A mathematical model simulating the kinetics of silica dissolution and hydroxyl ion consumption in a typical alkaline flooding environment is first developed. The model is based on the premise that dissolution occurs via hydrolysis of active sites through the formation of an intermediate complex, which is in equilibrium with the silicic acid in solution. Both static (batch) and dynamic (core flood) processes are simulated to examine the sensitivity of caustic consumption and silica dissolution to process parameters, and to determine rates of propagation of pH values. The model presented provides a quantitative description of the quartz-alkali interaction in terms of pH, salinity, ion exchange properties, temperature and contact time, which are of significant importance in the design of soluble silicate flooding processes. The modeling of an adiabatic hot waterflood assisted by the simultaneous injection of a chemical additive is next presented. The model is also applicable to the hot alkaline flooding under conditions of negligible adsorption of the generated anionic surfactant and of hydroxide adsorption being Langmuirian. The theory of generalized simple waves (coherence ) is used to develop solutions for the temperature, concentration, and oil saturation profiles, as well as the oil recovery curves. It is shown that, for Langmuir adsorption kinetics, the chemical resides in the heated region of the reservoir if its injection concentration is below a critical value, and in the unheated region if its concentration exceeds this critical value. Results for a chemical slug injection in a tertiary recovery process indicate recovery performance is maximized when chemical resides in the heated region of the reservior.
- Research Organization:
- University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG22-90BC14600
- OSTI ID:
- 10166409
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/BC/14600-45; ON: DE93000144
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: Jun 1993
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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