The Impact of Core Firing on EOR of Low Salinity-Surfactant Flooding

Abstract

The combination of injection of lower saline brine and surfactant will increase recovery in sandstone rocks than either when any of the techniques is singly applied. In this work, core IFT test, pH test, flooding experiments and measurement of dispersion were performed on four core samples which were grouped into two: group A, which were not fired at a temperature of 500°C for 24 hours and group B which were fired. Two low saline brines were prepared: LS1 which was derived by the dilution of seawater four times and LS2 which was derived by ten times diluting the seawater. The surfactant used was ethoxylated alcohol surfactant. Coreflood experiments were then performed on the rock sample starting with the injection of low saline followed by low saline brine combined with surfactant (LSS). Results from the experiments show that with the injection of LS1 brine and LSS1 higher increment in recoveries were obtained for group B than for group A cores. The same trend was also noticed with the injection of LS2 and LSS2. From the results, LS1 gave higher increment in oil recovery than LS2. Also LSS1 gave higher recoveries when compared with LSS2. In all the cases tested, core samples which were fired gave higher recoveries even though they had low permeabilities of 993 md for sample 3 and 1017 md for sample 4 than those which were not fired with higher permeabilities of 1050 md and 1055 md for samples 1 and 2 with respectively. This was attributed to the alteration of wettability as well as that of permeability caused by sample firing. The dispersion profiles of the rock samples show that all samples are homogeneous.