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. 2023 Jul 13;13(1):11362.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-37657-1.

Experimental investigation of wettability alteration, IFT reduction, and injection schemes during surfactant/smart water flooding for EOR application

Seyed Soheil Noorizadeh Bajgirani  1 , Amir Hossein Saeedi Dehaghani  2
Affiliations

Experimental investigation of wettability alteration, IFT reduction, and injection schemes during surfactant/smart water flooding for EOR application

Seyed Soheil Noorizadeh Bajgirani et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

In recent years, the application of smart water and surfactant in order to improve oil recovery has attracted special attention in carbonate reservoirs. In this research, the effects of various salts in smart water and two surfactants of Cetyl Trimethyl Ammonium Bromide (CTAB) and Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS) on the wettability alteration of carbonate rock and IFT were studied. Besides, along with micromodel flooding, core flooding tests were conducted to assess the amount of oil recovery at reservoir conditions as an injection scheme was used. In this regard, the results illustrated that the presence of CTAB or SDS in seawater (SW) can act better in contact angle reduction compared to smart water. Also, a four times increase in the concentration of SO42- and removing Na+ from SW reduced the contact angle to 68° and 71°, respectively, being the best possible options to alter the carbonate surface wettability to more water-wet states. Moreover, in the second-order process in which the rock section was first placed in SW, and then was put in the smart solution (with or without surfactant), CTAB had a great effect on the wettability alteration. In the case of IFT reduction, although SW4Mg2+, compared to other ions, better decreased the IFT to 17.83 mN/m, SW + SDS and SW + CTAB further declined the IFT to 0.67 and 0.33 mN/m, respectively. Concerning different ions, divalent cations (Mg2+ and Ca2+) show better results in improving oil recovery factor. However, the combination of SW and surfactants has a more positive effect on boosting oil recovery, as compared to smart water flooding. It should be mentioned that the first-order injection is better than the second-order one since SW is flooded at first, and then, after the breakthrough, smart water is injected into the micromodel. In addition, the core flooding tests showed that SW + CTAB and SW + SDS in tertiary injection increased the oil recovery to about 59 and 57%, respectively, indicating that the presence of CTAB could be more effective than that of SDS.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Contact angle and IFT setup.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic of micromodel.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Core flooding system.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Contact angle in various concentration of CTAB.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Contact angle in various concentration of SDS.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Proposed mechanism of wettability alteration by SW + CTAB: (a) ion-pair formation and (b) micelle formation.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Proposed mechanism of wettability alteration by SW + SDS: (a) inducing more negative charge, (b) formation of ion-pair, and (c) hydrophobic interaction.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Contact angle in three different orders.
Figure 9
Figure 9
IFT in optimum smart solutions.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Oil droplet shapes during IFT measurements between optimal smart solutions.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Oil droplet shapes during IFT measurement by CTAB (left) and SDS (right) solutions.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Macroscopic and microscopic images of micromodel flooding: (a) SW flooding, (b) SW4Mg2+ flooding, and (c) SW + CTAB flooding.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Oil recovery in three different stages of core flooding (core Num-1).
Figure 14
Figure 14
Oil recovery in three different stages of core flooding (core Num-2).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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