Effect of Temperature on Wettability and Optimum Wetting Conditions for Maximum Oil Recovery in Carbonate Reservoir System

Muhammad Adeel Nassar Sohal, Geoffrey Thyne, Erik Gydesen Søgaard

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

26 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The additional oil recovery from fractured & oil-wet carbonates by ionically modified water is principally based on changing wettability and often attributed to an improvement in water wetness. The influence of different parameters like dilution of salinity, potential anions, temperature, pressure, lithology, pH, oil acid and base numbers to improve water wetting has been tested in recovery experiments. In these studies temperature is mainly investigated to observe the reactivity of potential anions (SO42-, PO33-, and BO33-) at different concentrations. But the influence of systematically increasing temperature on wetting conditions has not been thoroughly investigated. In this experimental study the effect of different temperatures on wettability for brines of different ionic strength and composition has been investigated in depth. A series of flotation experiments were conducted at 23, 50 and 100oC using Dan outcrop chalk. The effect of each individual variable on wetting condition was tested independently. The brines included seawater, seawater without sulfate, seawater (augmented with 2- 4 times sulfate) and seawater containing borate instead of sulfate. All brines were diluted 2, 4 10, 20 and 100 times. It was observed that as temperature increased the water-wetness decreased for seawater and seawater dilutions, however, the presence of elevated sulfate can somewhat counter this trend as sulfate increased oil wetting.
Original languageEnglish
JournalEnergy & Fuels
Volume31
Issue number4
Pages (from-to)3557-3566
Number of pages21
ISSN0887-0624
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 23 Feb 2017

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