Published 12 issues per year
ISSN Print: 1091-028X
ISSN Online: 1934-0508
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A MODEL FOR LOW SALINITY FLOODING EXPERIMENTS: DISSOLUTION AND ION EXCHANGE
ABSTRACT
The potential of low salinity water injection to improve oil recovery has recently generated interest both from petroleum science and industry. A number of experimental studies have highlighted the importance of carbonate solubility in the recovery process. In this paper, we present a one-dimensional mathematical model that couples multicomponent ion exchange, carbonate solubility, and transport of the water and oil phases. The transport of the phases is linked to the desorption of the divalent cations from the clay surface in such a way that increased desorption of the divalent cations leads to improved flow function. We first compare the flow model against some published experimental data, demonstrating that the model is able to capture important trends in the experimental results. We then use the flow model to study the effect of multicomponent ion exchange and carbonate solubility on oil recovery during simulated floods with different low salinity brines and sea water-like brines. We find that the recovery is very dependent on the individual brine composition and that dissolution of calcite tends to reduce desorption of calcium ions from the rock surface and hence the possibility to improve recovery by the multicomponent ion exchange mechanism. The study also shows how the calcite dissolution can change the brine composition of the injected brine deep in the reservoir and hence alter the intended chemistry of the brine-rock interaction.
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Chakraborty Susmit , Govindarajan Suresh Kumar, Gummadi Sathyanarayana N., Numerical Investigation on Low Salinity Augmented Microbial Flooding LSAMF within a Sandstone Core for Enhanced Oil Recovery Under Nonisothermal and Fluctuating pH Conditions, Day 3 Thu, September 23, 2021, 2021. Crossref
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Chakraborty Susmit, Govindarajan Suresh Kumar, Gummadi Sathyanarayana N., Numerical Investigation on Low-Salinity Augmented Microbial Flooding within a Sandstone Core for Enhanced Oil Recovery under Nonisothermal and pH Gradient Conditions, SPE Journal, 27, 04, 2022. Crossref