A Novel Method with Dilute Surfactant Flooding by Considering the Effect of Time and Temperature on Crude Oil Aging, Experimental Study on Heavy Oil of Bangestan

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

1 Department of Petroleum Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), Tehran, Iran.

2 Centre for Enhanced Oil Recovery and CO2 Solutions, Institute of Petroleum Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK.

Abstract

Wettability alteration has been a sophisticated issue for scientists and reservoir engineers since early 20th century; thus, many investigations have been carried out to determine wettability and enhance it to ideal conditions, which leads to improvement in oil recovery. Dilute surfactant flooding has been approved as one of the noteworthy methods in chemical flooding. Several petroleum reservoirs were recognized as suitable nominees for surfactant/water flooding when screening criteria were established. Surfactant flooding was applied to mobilize the trapped oil in reservoirs. The key mechanism to enhance oil recovery by surfactant flooding was defined as rock wettability alteration. Experimental investigations into the impact of aging and temperature on wettability alteration were performed. Subsequently, core flooding test of surfactant was performed to define the effect of thinned cationic surfactant slug with cyclic 7 days technique (Multi-slug injection) on displacement sweep efficiency in the carbonate core of Bangestan reservoir with its heavy oil reservoir. Moreover, contact angle and interfacial tension (IFT) measurements were made to gain the supplementary information for a surfactant/waterflooding. The best concentration of C19TAB was determined by measuring interfacial tension values of the crude oil in contact with surfactant solutions prepared in synthetic brackish water. Results displayed a decrease in residual oil saturation by changing the contact angle and IFT reduction between oil and water. Moreover, aging was known as a significant constraint to change the wettability index to make similar oil-wet condition. Besides, laboratory experiments verified that the influence of wettability alteration was higher than IFT reduction.

Keywords

References

[1] Heidari, M.A., Habibi, A., Ayatollahi, S. and Masihi, M. (2014). “The Effect of Time and Temperature on Crude Oil Aging to Do a Right Surfactant Flooding with a New Approach.”, Offshore Technology Conference Asia to be held 25-28 March, 2014 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, OTC-24801-MS.(SPE).
[2] Habibi, A., Heidari, M.A., Al-Hardami, H., Al-Ajmi, A., Al-Wahaibi, Y. and Ayatollahi, S. (2012). “Effect of MgO Nanofluid Injection into Water Sensitive Formation Prevent the Water Shock Permeability Impairment.” Proceeding of the SPE international Oilfield Nanotechnology Conference and Exhibition, Noordwijk, Netherlands. 
[3] Habibi, A., Heidari, M.A., Al-Hardami, H., Al-Ajmi, A., Al-Wahaibi, Y. and Ayatollahi, S. (2012) “Effect of Nanofluid Injection on Fines Mitigation to Remediate Formation Damage: A Microscopic View.”, Journal of Advanced Microscopy Research. Vol. 7, pp. 140-144.
[4] Habibi, A., Heidari, M.A., Al-Hadrami, H., Al-Ajmi, A., Al-Wahaibi, Y. and Ayatollahi, S. (2013). “Effect of Nanofluid Treatment on Water Sensitive Formation to Investigate Water Shock Phenomenon, an Experimental Study.” Journal of Dispersion Science and Technology , Taylor & Francis.
[5] Anderson, W.G. (1986). “Wettability Literature Survey - Part 2: Wettability Measurement.” JPT 1246.
[6] Heidari, M.A., Habibi, A., Ayatollahiand, S. and Sohbatzadeh, F. (2014). “A New Method for Wettability Alteration by Use of Cold Atmospheric Pressure Argon/Oxygen Plasma Torch.” Offshore Technology Conference Asia held 25-28 March 2014 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. OTC-24733-MS. (SPE).
[7] heidari, M.A., Jadali, A., Habibi, A., Masihi, M. (2012). “Investigation of Core Breaking by The Effect of Inlet Fluid Flow Pressure During the Water flooding by One of the Iranian South West Oil.” Oil and Energy International Magazine, Vol. 72, pp. 42-48.
[8] Heidari, M.A., Habibi, A., Masihi, M. (2013). “Effect of Time and Temperature on Experimental Investigation of Core Aging with Oil Sample from Iranian Southwest Reservoir.” Oil, Gas and Energy International Magazine, Vol. 15, pp. 3-8.
[9] Green, D.W. and Willhite, G.P. (1998). “Enhanced Oil Recovery.” SPE Textbook Series, Vol. 6.
[10] Ali, S.M.F., Thomas, S. (1996). “The Promise and Problems of Enhanced Oil Recovery Methods.” Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, No.35 .
[11] Amjadimanesh, A., Salimi, F. and Heidari, M.A. (2014) “Methods for Measuring Asphaltene Deposition in Flowing System.” First National Conference (Oil, Gas and Petrochemicals), Shiraz, Iran.
[12] Jadali, A., Heidari, M.A., Mohammadi and Yousefnezhad, D. (2011) “The Effect of Polymer Flooding on Enhancing Viscous Oil Recovery by Laboratory Investigation.” Third National Conference of Modern Researches in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Mahshahr, Iran.
[13] Babadagli, T. (2001). “Scaling of cocurrent and countercurrent capillary imbibition for surfactant and polymer injection in naturally fractured reservoirs.” SPE Journal Vol.6 pp. 465–478.
[14] Yamazaki, T., Okabe, H., Akita, Y. and Aso, K. (2000) “Automatic Continuous-Measuring System of Interfacial Tension by Spinning Drop Technique.” SPE Asia Pacific Conference on Integrated Modelling for Asset Management held in Yokohama, Japan. 
[15] Alvarado, V. and Manrique, E. (2010). “Enhanced oil recovery: field planning and development strategies.” Gulf Professional Publishing.
[16] Wang, Y., Xu, H., Yu, W., Bai, B., Song, X. and Zhang, J. (2011) “Surfactant induced reservoir wettability alteration: Recent theoretical and experimental advances in enhanced oil recovery.” Petroleum Science No.8 pp. 463-476.
[17] Chen, H.L., Lucas, L.R., Nogaret, L.A.D., Yang, H.D. and Kenyon, D.E. (2001). “Laboratory Monitoring of Surfactant Imbibition with Computerized Tomography.” Society of Petroleum Engineers, Vol.4  doi:10.2118/69197-PA.
[18] Standnes, D.C. and Austad, T. (2000). “Wettability alteration in chalk 2.” Mechanism for wettability alteration from oil-wet to water-wet using surfactants. JPSE 28, 123–143.
[19] Anderson, W.G. (1986). “Wettability Literature Survey - Part 2: Wettability Measurement.” JPT 1246.
[20] Zhou, X., Morrow, N.R. and Ma, S. (1996). “Interrelationship of Wettability, Initial Water Saturation, Aging Time, and Oil Recovery by Spontaneous Imbibition and Water Flooding.” Society of Petroleum Engineers. Vol. 12 doi:10.2118/35436-MS.
[21] Chen, P. and Mohanty, K.K. (2012). “Surfactant-Mediated Spontaneous Imbibition in Carbonate Rocks at Harsh Reservoir Conditions.” Society of Petroleum Engineers. doi:10.2118/153960-MS.
[22] Mattax, C.C., Blackwell, R.J. and Tomich, J.F. (1983). “RTD 2(3) Recent Advances in Surfactant Flooding.” World Petroleum Congres.
Journal of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
Volume 51, Issue 2
December 2017
Pages 155-163

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 28 January 2017
  • Accept Date: 15 November 2017

Share

How to cite

Statistics