Surfactant-Aided Low-Salinity Waterflooding for Low Temperature Carbonates
- The University of Texas at Austin; The University of Texas at Austin
- The University of Texas at Austin
Carbonate reservoirs tend to be oil-wet/mixed-wet and heterogeneous due to mineralogy and diagenesis. Some carbonate reservoirs are fractured especially dolomite formations. The objective of this study is to improve oil recovery in low-temperature dolomite reservoirs using low salinity and surfactant aided spontaneous imbibition. The low salinity brine composition was optimized using zeta potential, contact angle experiments, and wettability index calculations. Significant surface reactions on dolomite rocks were observed at the salinity of 2500 ppm. Thirty-seven surfactants were evaluated for wettability alterations using contact angles. Surfactants with lower IFT and lower contact angles were selected for spontaneous imbibition. In spontaneous imbibition experiments, some formulations produced a significant amount of oil compared to the control samples without any surfactants. Two cationic surfactants produced 41-53% of OOIP and an AOS anionic surfactant produced 39% of OOIP in a month. These experiments demonstrated that a combination of low water salinity and surfactants can make the originally oil-wet dolomite rocks more water-wet and improve oil recovery by imbibition at a low temperature of 35 °C.
- Research Organization:
- The University of Texas at Austin
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE), Oil & Natural Gas
- DOE Contract Number:
- FE0031791
- OSTI ID:
- 1777832
- Conference Information:
- Journal Name: SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition Journal Volume: 2020
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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