Screening of mixed surfactant systems: Phase behavior studies and CT imaging of surfactant-enhanced oil recovery experiments

Technical Report · Mon Nov 01 04:00:00 EST 1993

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/10108854· OSTI ID:10108854

Llave, F M; Gall, B L; Lorenz, P B; Cook, I M; Scott, L J

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
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

02 PETROLEUM
020300
37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
400201
ADDITIVES
BENCH-SCALE EXPERIMENTS
CHEMICAL AND PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHY
DRILL CORES
DRILLING AND PRODUCTION
ENHANCED RECOVERY
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
MIXTURES
OIL WELLS
PETROLEUM
PETROLEUM SULFONATES
PHASE STUDIES
PHENOLS
SURFACTANTS
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
WATERFLOODING