Impact of clay type and water composition on low salinity water injection – visualisation approach
Tammy Amirian A B and Manouchehr Haghighi AA Australian School of Petroleum, Faculty of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.
B Corresponding author. Email: Tammy.Amirian@adelaide.edu.au
The APPEA Journal 58(1) 51-59 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ17076
Submitted: 5 December 2017 Accepted: 29 January 2018 Published: 28 May 2018
Abstract
Low salinity water (LSW) injection as an enhanced oil recovery method has attracted much attention in the past two decades. Previously, it was found that the presence of clay such as kaolinite and water composition like the nature of cations affect the enhancement of oil recovery under LSW injection. In this study, a pore-scale visualisation approach was developed using a 2D glass micromodel to investigate the impact of clay type and water composition on LSW injection. The glass micromodels were coated by kaolinite and illite. A meniscus moving mechanism was observed and the oil–water interface moved through narrow throats to large bodies, displacing the wetting phase (oil phase). In the presence of kaolinite, the effect of LSW injection was reflected in the change to the wettability with a transition towards water-wetness in the large sections of the pore walls. The advance of the stable water front left behind an oil film on the oil-wet portions of pore walls; however, in water-wet surfaces, the interface moved towards the surface and replaced the oil film. As a result of wettability alteration towards a water-wet state, the capillary forces were not dominant throughout the system and the water–oil menisci displaced oil in large portions of very narrow channels. This LSW effect was not observed in the presence of illite. With regard to the water composition effect, systems containing divalent cations like Ca2+ showed the same extent of recovery as those containing only monovalent ions. The observation indicates a significant role of cation exchange in wettability alteration. Fines migration was insignificant in the observations.
Keywords: cation exchange, clay minerals, EOR, fines migration, LSW injection, wettability.
Tammy Amirian is a PhD candidate at the Australian School of Petroleum. She has experience in the mining sector in Western Australia. She holds a Master’s degree in petroleum engineering with specialisation in reservoir engineering and a BSc degree in Mining engineering. Her research interests are fundamental processes in multiphase flow, reactive transport in porous media, solid-fluid interaction and their implication for enhanced oil recovery methods, and modelling and simulation of fluid flow in porous media. Currently, Tammy is conducting a research on low salinity water flooding as an emerging EOR technique. Member: SPE. |
Manouchehr (Manny) Haghighi is an associate professor of petroleum engineering. His research and teaching focus is on unconventional reservoirs, reservoir simulation, well testing, and formation evaluation. He has supervised more than 40 MSc and 10 PhD students. Before joining the University of Adelaide in 2009, Manouchehr was associate professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Tehran (Iran). During 2000–07, he was the head of the petroleum engineering program at the University of Tehran. In 2000, Manouchehr established Simtech, a consulting company for integrated reservoir simulation in which he has been project director of several full-field simulation projects for oil and gas reservoirs. Manouchehr has published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals or presented in international conferences. He has served as a reviewer for various journals including the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering. Member: SPE. |
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