Doctoral Dissertations

Keywords and Phrases

Coupling LS Water with EOR Techniques; Enhanced Oil Recovery; Low Salinity Waterflooding; Mechanisms Behind LS Waterflooding

Abstract

"Ever growing global energy demand and the natural decline in oil production from mature oil fields have been the main incentives to search for methods to increase recovery efficiency for several decades. Water flooding is extensively applied worldwide to improve oil recovery. The recent drop in oil prices has turned the oil industry to the cheapest improved oil recovery (IOR) techniques, such as low salinity (LS) waterflooding. Also, the reduction in reservoir energy and the friendly environmental aspects of low salinity water flooding (LSWF) provide additional incentives for its use. That LS water requires decreasing only the active divalent cations such as Ca2+, Mg2+ and water salinity makes LS water flooding a relatively simple and low expense IOR technique. The water chemistry significantly impacts the oil recovery factor. Wettability is one of the major parameters that control the efficiency of water flooding. The primary mechanism for increased oil recovery during LSWF in both sandstone and carbonate reservoirs is wettability alteration of the rock surface from oil-wet to water-wet. LS water imbibed into the low water-wet zones, the water wetness of the rock increased after injecting LS water, and in turn, microscopic sweep efficiency enhanced too. The mechanism behind LS water flooding has been extensively investigated in the literature but it still a topic of debate. The objective of this research is to solve the controversy and show the following: (1) Water chemistry weather partially or strongly determines the dominant wettability alteration mode. (2) The role of divalent cations in the formation water and in the injected water. (3) Clay's role for incremental recovery. This research work seeks to quantify the effects of mineral composition and water chemistry on water-rock interactions and wettability alteration"--Abstract, page iv.

Advisor(s)

Flori, Ralph E.

Committee Member(s)

Brady, Patrick V.
Dunn-Norman, Shari
Rogers, J. David
Wei, Mingzhen

Department(s)

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering

Degree Name

Ph. D. in Petroleum Engineering

Comments

The authors would like to express their grateful acknowledgement to Sandia National Laboratories, which is a multimission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA- 0003525.

Publisher

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Publication Date

Fall 2019

Journal article titles appearing in thesis/dissertation

  • Insights into the role of clays in low salinity water flooding in sand columns
  • Eliminate the role of clay in sandstone: EOR low salinity water flooding
  • Effect of divalent cations in formation water on wettability alteration during low salinity water flooding in sandstone reservoirs: Oil recovery analyses, surface reactivity tests, contact angle, and spontaneous imbibition experiments
  • Effect of divalent cations in low salinity water flooding in sandstone reservoirs
  • Coupling low salinity water flooding and steam flooding (LSASF) for sandstone unconventional oil reservoirs
  • Novel coupling smart water-CO2 flooding for sandstone reservoirs

Pagination

xix, 199 pages

Note about bibliography

Includes bibliographic references.

Rights

© 2019 Hasan Naeem Hameedi Al-Saedi, All rights reserved.

Document Type

Dissertation - Open Access

File Type

text

Language

English

Thesis Number

T 11611

Electronic OCLC #

1139525621

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