A Novel Ultra-Low IFT Spontaneous Emulsification System for Enhanced Oil Recovery in Low Permeability Reservoirs
Abstract
Emulsion, as an oil displacement and conformance control system, provides essential contribution for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). However, conventional flooding systems, which form large emulsion droplets compared to the pore size of porous media in formation, usually encounters problems including high capillary pressure and poor displacement efficiency in low permeability reservoirs. Thus, it is necessary to find a new flooding system that has high displacement efficiency and no capillary pressure. In our reseach, effects of combined surfactant and alkali on interfacial tension and spontaneous emulsification capacity for the surfactant solution were evaluated to determine the optimum formula of the flooding system. Then, the oil/water interfacial rheology and environmental influence on the spontaneous emulsion stability were performed to study the enhanced mechanism of spontaneous emulsification system. It was proposed that the solution with alkali and surfactants not only could achieve ultra-low interfacial tension, but also exhibited an excellent spontaneous emulsification behavior at a reservoir temperature of 45 °C. The average size of formed spontaneous O/W emulsion droplets was about 0.2 µm which was smaller than average size of the low permeability throats. The presence of the optimum system can further improve the interfacial rheological properties. Ultimately, the oil displacement tests, using outcrop cores with permeability in the range of 25-35 mD, indicating that EOR slug can improve approximately 12.4% as compared to the initial oil in place (IOIP) through the strikingly spontaneous emulsification flooding after water flooding, better than that of the conventional surfactant flooding. The laboratory research suggested that the newly formulated spontaneous emulsification system can be applied as an ideal EOR system and efficiently overcome the constraint of high capillary pressure in conventional chemical flooding for low permeability reservoirs.
Recommended Citation
Z. Li and Y. Lu and H. Wu and M. Yang and H. Feng and D. Xu and J. Hou and W. Kang and H. Yang and Y. Zhao and B. Bai, "A Novel Ultra-Low IFT Spontaneous Emulsification System for Enhanced Oil Recovery in Low Permeability Reservoirs," Proceedings of the SPE EOR Conference at Oil and Gas West Asia (2018, Muscat, Oman), Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), Mar 2018.
Meeting Name
SPE EOR Conference at Oil and Gas West Asia, OGWA 2018 (2018: Mar. 26-28, Muscat, Oman)
Department(s)
Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
Capillarity; Capillary tubes; Drops; Efficiency; Emulsification; Emulsions; Enhanced recovery; Floods; Oil well flooding; Petroleum reservoir evaluation; Pore size; Porous materials; Reservoirs (water); Surface active agents; Well flooding, Conventional surfactants; Displacement efficiency; Enhanced oil recovery; Environmental influences; Interfacial rheology; Reservoir temperatures; Spontaneous emulsification; Ultralow interfacial tension, Low permeability reservoirs
International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
978-161399569-3
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2018 Society of Petroleum Engineers, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Mar 2018
