Effect of kaolinite content on formation damage due to fines migration: systematic laboratory and modelling study
Thomas Russell A B , Larissa Chequer A , Alexander Badalyan A , Zhenjiang You A and Pavel Bedrikovetsky AA Australian School of Petroleum, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005, Australia.
B Corresponding author. Email: thomas.l.russell@adelaide.edu.au
The APPEA Journal 58(2) 743-747 https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ17189
Accepted: 1 March 2018 Published: 28 May 2018
Abstract
Laboratory tests have been done to investigate the effect of kaolinite content on the behaviour of unconsolidated sandstone rocks during the injection of low-salinity water. Artificial cores comprised of kaolinite and chemically washed sand were prepared and compacted for this study. Five cores with kaolinite weight percentages ranging from 1% to 10% were injected sequentially with sodium chloride solutions of stepwise decreasing salinity. The permeability of the cores declined to as little as 1/54 times the initial permeability. Negligible permeability decline was observed when the kaolinite content was only 1% of the total mass. Generally, the extent of permeability decline was greater in cores with a larger percentage of kaolinite. The results are explained by the effect of kaolinite not only on the abundance of detachable clays, but also on the pore size. The results from the laboratory test were fitted with an exact solution of a model for fines migration. The parameters from these tests were input into a model for radial injection of low-salinity water to predict the extent of injectivity decline. The results serve as a benchmark for correlating injectivity decline due to fines migration between wells using the rock mineralogy. The tests suggest that mineralogy alone is not sufficient to fully predict formation damage, and that pore geometry and the nature of particle detachment are still critical factors for this process.
Keywords: clay content, fines migration, formation damage, injectivity decline, kaolinite, laboratory study, mathematical modelling.
Thomas Russell is currently a PhD candidate in Petroleum Engineering at the Australian School of Petroleum, University of Adelaide, Australia. He completed his BSc degree in Petroleum Engineering at the same institution in 2016. His research interests include Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and formation damage processes in the petroleum industry. He currently works with laboratory testing and mathematical modelling to study fines migration in petroleum reservoirs. |
Larissa Chequer is presently a PhD student in Petroleum Engineering at the University of Adelaide, Australian School of Petroleum, Australia. She holds an MSc in Reservoir Engineering and a BEng in Exploration and Production Petroleum Engineering at the North Fluminense State University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She is currently working with mathematical and laboratory modelling of suspension flow in porous media, low-salinity waterflooding, formation damage, injectivity impairment and fines migration. |
Dr Alexander Badalyan is currently a Research Fellow at Australian School of Petroleum at the University of Adelaide. He holds a BEng in Automatic Control from Grozny State Oil Technical University (Grozny, Russian Federation/USSR) and a PhD in Theoretical Fundamentals of Heat Engineering from Azerbaijan State Oil Academy (Baku, Azerbaijan/USSR). Alexander held various academic and research positions at Grozny State Oil Technical University and the University of South Australia before joining the University of Adelaide. His research interests cover suspension flow in porous media, characterisation of porous solids by manometric gas adsorption, thermophysical properties of fluids, application of supercritical and liquid carbon dioxide for extraction of essential oils, dissolved gas-in-oil analysis of power transformers, online monitoring of residual disinfectant concentration in drinking water and development of computer-based systems for real-time process monitoring and control. Alexander’s teaching interests include Instrumentation and Process Control, Heat Transfer and Environmental Chemistry. He is a coauthor of one Australian Patent, one book chapter, 42 peer-review journal publications and 34 conference publications. Alexander holds memberships of the American Chemical Society and the Institute of Instrumentation, Control and Automation Australia Inc. He was awarded the University of South Australia Vice-Chancellor Award for Innovation in Product Improvement in 2002. |
Dr Zhenjiang You is a senior researcher in the Australian School of Petroleum at the University of Adelaide, Australia. His research interests include suspension/colloid/nanoparticle transport in porous media, fines migration induced formation damage in oil/gas/geothermal reservoirs, EOR from low-salinity waterflooding and flow distribution within gas and oil wells. Dr You received his BEng degree in engineering mechanics and PhD degree in fluid mechanics, both from Zhejiang University. He is the author of three book chapters and over 100 papers in international journals and conferences. |
Professor Pavel Bedrikovetsky, after defending his PhD at Applied Mathematics Department of Moscow Gubkin Petroleum University in 1982, worked at the Oil-Gas Fluid Mechanics Department of this same University until 1991, holding the position of Research Professor (DSc) in Petroleum Engineering. From 1991–1994, Pavel was a Visiting Professor at Delft University of Technology and the Imperial College of Science and Technology, where he wrote a book (Kluwer Academic, London, 1993) and consulted BP, British Gas, Chevron, Total, Shell and Statoil on EOR and reservoir characterisation. In 1994, he became a Senior Staff Consultant to Petrobras in formation damage, waterflooding and Improved Oil Recovery. Pavel joined ASP at University of Adelaide in 2007 and works on nano-technologies, EOR and formation damage in close co-operation with Santos and European oil companies. |
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