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Wettability Alteration Due to Low Salinity Water Technology: Rock and

Fluids Interactions

Presentation · July 2017

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20289.25440

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Alireza Bigdeli
Universidade Federal do Ceará
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 Chemical Flooding Laboratory

Wettability Alteration Due to Low Salinity Water Technology

Rock and Fluids Interactions

Alireza Bigdeli
(Alirezabigdeli71@gmail.com)

University of Tehran
July 2017

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

 ➢ Adjustment of Ionic Compositions of injected Water*
Terminology of Engineered Water Technology
➢ Tuning injection Water Salinity**
Trade Mark Company
➢ The Ionic Composition of flooded water is Manipulated***
LoSalTM BP
➢ Improved oil recovery by Ionically Modified Water****
Smart WaterFlood Saudi Aramco
Designer Waterflood Shell ➢ Ion-Engineered Water Flooding*****
Advanced Ion Management
ExxonMobil
(AIMSM)
Author and Citation Name of Review Paper
Dang et al (2013)-25 State-of-the Art Low Salinity Waterflooding for Enhanced Oil Recovery
Sheng (2014)-65 Critical review of low-salinity water flooding

Al-Shalabi & Sepehrnoori (2015)-10 A comprehensive review of low salinity/engineered water injections and their applications in sandstone and carbonate rocks

Sohal et al (2016)-11 A Review of Recovery Mechanisms of Ionically Modifed Waterfood in Carbonate Reservoirs

Jackson et al (2016)-6 Evidence, mechanisms and improved understanding of controlled salinity waterflooding part 1: Sandstones

Strand et al (2016)-0 Water based EOR from Clastic Oil Reservoirs by Wettability Alteration: A Review of Chemical Aspects

Kilybay et al (2017)-0 A Review on the Progress of Ion-Engineered Water Flooding

* A New Insight on the Impact of Individual Ions on Fluid/Fluid Interactions and SmarWater Recovery
** Improved/Enhanced Oil Recovery from Carbonate Reservoirs by Tuning Injection Water Salinity and Ionic Content Rashid et al 2015 = There are increasing evidences that
*** Smart-Water EOR Made Smarter A Laboratory Development
**** Study of ionically modified water performance in carbonate reservoir system by multivariate data analysis adjusting the chemistry of the injecting water improves the oil Tuning = Adjustment of the system
***** A Review on the Progress of Ion-Engineered Water Flooding recovery efficiency to secure optimum performance

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

Published studies, in which no benefit was observed
Author
Alotaibi MB, et al
Boussour S, et al .
Cissokho M, et al
Nasralla RA, Nasr-El-Din HA
Pu H, et al
RezaeiDoust A et al
Rivet SM, et al
Shaker Shiran B & Skauge A.
Sharma MM & Filoco PR.
Skrettingland K et al
Zhang Y & Morrow NR.
Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli
Paper
A comprehensive EOR study using low salinity water in sandstone reservoirs
Oil recovery by lowsalinity brine injection: laboratory results on outcrop and reservoir cores
Low salinity oil recovery on clayey sandstone: experimental study
Double-layer expansion: is it a primary mechanism of improved oil recovery by low-salinity waterflooding?
Application of coalbed methane water to oil recovery by low salinity waterflooding.
A discussion of the low-salinity EOR potential for a North Sea sandstone field.
A coreflood investigation of low-salinity enhanced oil recovery.
Wettability and oil recovery by low salinity injection.
Effect of brine salinity and crude-oil properties on oil recovery and residual saturations.
Snorre low-salinity-water injection-coreflooding experiments and single-well field pilot.
Comparison of secondary and tertiary recovery with change in injection brine composition for crude oil/sandstone
combinations.
Chemical Flooding Laboratory
 Two types of common desalination methods
Core
Floodin
g AFM
and
IFT
Ellipso
metry

Sponta
Contact Pervious neous
Angel Studies imbibiti
ons

Reserv
oir Micro-
Simulat Models
ion Mathe
matical
Modeli
ng

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

M. A. AlGeer et al 2016a* Fluid/Fluid Interactions

T=25 T=50 T=90

SmartWater recipes, composed exclusively of magnesium ions, exhibited a remarkably low level of IFT values.

The weak ionic bond in MgCl2, might be the reason behind low values of IFT achieved through that brine

SmartWater recipes, composed of sulfate anions, have resulted in higher IFT values.

Diffusion and adsorption/desorption are the main process acting at the interface

*A New Insight on the Impact of Individual Ions on Fluid/Fluid Interactions and SmarWater Recovery

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

 Modeling the effect of low salinity water flooding
Jerauld (2008) proposed a 1D mathematical model This model considers salt as an aqueous component that can be
transported and traced. Furthermore, capillary pressure and relative permeability functions depend on salinity:

Another mathematical model based on multi-ion exchange (MIE) was developed by Omekeh (2012). This model
describes precipitation/dissolution processes in carbonate rocks to predict additional oil recovery due to LoSal WI.
Release or adsorption of divalent cations is measured by function m:

Al-Shalabi (2014) developed another weighting parameter to

describe the effects of low salinity water flooding on relative
permeability functions. In this model, weighting function is
calculated based on experimental data of contact angles. Moreover,
model assumes fixed relative permeability curves for water
phase, because injection of low salinity water had no significant
impact on water permeability

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

Etemadi (2016) approach is similar to Omekeh (2012) except that capillary pressure is included and reaction terms
are omitted.

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

 Wettability is not qualitative measure of the contact angle necessarily

Recovery = Oil Release + Oil Mobility*

Methods of Wettability Measurements**

*From Geoffrey Thyne1: Wettability alteration in the Eagle Ford:

how to design drilling fluids to improve recovery in shale plays ** From Geoffrey Thyne 2: A Review of the Measurement of Wettability

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

Crude Oil/Brine/Rock Interactions ➢ It could cause a risk of formation damage and scaling

➢ The effect of dissolution and precipitation was mostly studied in

Dissolution and Precipitation connection with changes of porosity, permeability and mechanical
properties of the rock.
Sorption
➢ Also, it may be considered as an internal source/sink for the ions
Surface Complexation that contribute to the smart water effect

Calcite Calcite can dissolve according to the following dissolution equilibrium reaction
This equation describes the dissolution process in distilled water in the absence of carbon dioxide
Complete picture of calcite dissolution is more complicated;

Dolomite The following reaction describes the dissolution of dolomite in water

Similarly to calcite, the pressure of carbon dioxide controls the process of

dolomite dissolution. The dissolution rate of dolomite is an order of magnitude
lower than the dissolution rate of calcite

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

 Crude Oil/Brine/Rock Interactions
Dissolution and Precipitation
Sorption
Surface Complexation
Anhydrite
formation of anhydrite may occur under seawater injection into a reservoir,
especially at elevated temperatures. The reason is that solubility of anhydrite
drastically decreases with temperature

One should expect that increasing the temperature may result in anhydrite
precipitation that will lower the concentrations of Ca2+ and SO4 2−. Vice versa,
during injection of a low salinity brine, one should expect anhydrite dissolution
to occur and increase the concentrations of Ca2+ and SO4 2−.

The rate of anhydrite precipitation is a difficult parameter to determine. A primary difference between calcite and
anhydrite is their distribution within the porous media. Calcite is abundant, whereas anhydrite is not always present.
Formation of a crystal starts with a nucleation, which is delayed by the so-called induction time dependent on the
thermodynamic conditions. Thus, concerning precipitation of anhydrite in a core or a reservoir it is hard to determine when
and where it will start

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

Crude Oil/Brine/Rock Interactions
Low Salinity Water injection
Dissolution and Precipitation
(Salinity is less than 5000 PPM)
Sorption
Surface Complexation

Anhydrite

Calcite

Dolomite

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

Crude Oil/Brine/Rock Interactions SOLMINEQ.88
GeoChemical Packages KGEOFLOW
Dissolution and Precipitation Geochemist's Workbench
PHREEQC,
Sorption
CMG
Surface Complexation

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

 Crude Oil/Brine/Rock Interactions Henry adsorption isotherm

Dissolution and Precipitation where 𝑐∗ is the concentration per bulk volume in mol/l(core), 𝑐 is the
concentration in solution in mol/l(fluid), the distribution coefficient 𝐾𝑑 is
Sorption dimensionless
Surface Complexation The main disadvantage of this model is that it does not take into account
the limited number of sorbing sites on the surface. It is mainly used
Langmuir isotherms for uncharged, weakly sorbing molecules

The Langmuir model provides an improvement over the Henry model by maintaining the mole balance on the sorbing
sites where X stands for the surface site, A for the aqueous species, and XA for the occupied site
surface species concentrations

The sorption capacity

Multicomponent ion exchange
The ion exchange model is commonly applied in geochemistry to describe the interaction of cationic species with
clay minerals. As can be understood from the name, the model does not treat the sorption and desorption of
species, but replacement of one ion by another.

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

Crude Oil/Brine/Rock Interactions The main disadvantage is that none of adsorption models takes into account the
electric state of the surface, which is known to vary considerably with pH, ionic
Dissolution and Precipitation strength and ionic composition
A more general approach allowing to overcome these limitations is introduced by
Sorption the surface complexation models*/**.
Surface Complexation

The first layer, known as the Stern layer, is comprised of the ions that are adsorbed on the surface and are fixed. In this
layer, with a typical thickness of 1 nm, the major part of the potential drop occurs
The second layer, a diffuse layer, has a thickness between 1 to 500 nm depending on the surface charge and the ionic
strength of the solution

*A. W. Adamson, A. P. Gast, et al., Physical chemistry of surfaces. Interscience publishers New York, 1967.
**W. Stumm and J. Morgan, “Aquatic chemistry, chemical equilibra and rates in natural waters,” Environmental Science and Technology Series, 1996

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

Crude Oil/Brine/Rock Interactions

Salinity Dependent Contact Angels (Haagh et al 2017)

Highly idealized system (SandStone)

Dolomite

Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory

Crude Oil/Brine/Rock Interactions

Salinity Dependent Contact Angels (Haagh et al 2017) 𝛿𝑜𝑠 = 𝛿𝑤𝑠 + 𝛿 + 𝜑(ℎሻ

Given the complexity of the problem, a numerical statistical

approach based on molecular dynamics simulations such as the
potentials of mean force used e.g. by Horinek* et al. in the
context of ion adsorption to solid surfaces may be the only
realistic approach to address this problem.

*Specific ion adsorption at the air/water interface: The role of hydrophobic solvation
Prepared By A.R.Bigdeli Chemical Flooding Laboratory
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