A New Class of Viscoelastic Surfactants for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract

A new class of viscoelastic surfactants for chemical enhanced oil recovery is presented. The triphenoxmethanes (TPM) show promise under harsh conditions of high salinity and high temperatures. The TPM's are viscoelastic at low concentrations (<0.5%w/w), show good stability in highly saline brine (18.6% TDS) that contains high concentrations of divalent cations at elevated temperatures (>70°C). Static adsorption measurements show acceptable values for the harsh conditions under study. Rheological measurements demonstrate that the viscoelasticity is not from formation of wormlike micelles and displays non-Maxwell behavior. We propose a novel supramolecular structure that explains the laboratory and rheological observations to date. The compounds show good injectivity into 2 Darcy Gildehaus sandstone The development of this class of compounds combines the efforts of a team comprised of synthesis, analytics, rheology, core lab and computational chemistry. The goal is to develop an understanding the system's behavior from the molecular level in-silico via computational chemistry, through coreflood tests -and beyond- for a future field pilot. The structure- property-relationships that are being developed will lead to further refinement and targeted development of next generation molecules with improved properties.

Research progress of viscoelastic surfactants for enhanced oil recovery

“…3. Some viscoelastic surfactants still have problems such as high oil-water interfacial tension, poor temperature-resistance, poor viscosity-increase, large dosage, and high cost (Samuel et al, 2000;Siggel et al, 2012Siggel et al, , 2014Zhu et al, 2016).…”

Multifunctional Evaluation of a New Supramolecular Complex in Enhanced Oil Recovery, Removal/Control of Organic Damage, and Heavy Crude Oil Viscosity Reduction

“…Thus, these results suggest that interactions of asphaltenes and resins with supramolecular complex play an important role on the heavy crude oil viscosity reduction, where the AMESUS chemical agent has capabilities to disaggregate, disperse or break the asphaltene aggregates in order to modify the rheological behavior of the heavy crude oil sample. Moreover, and due to the non-Newtonian rheological behavior of supramolecular complexes as viscoelastic surfactants applied on EOR [40][41][42] , as a future work it would be interesting to carry out a rheological experimental study to evaluate the influence of the viscoelastic properties of AMESUS on the sweeping efficiency.…”

Wormlike Micellar Solutions, Beyond the Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery Restrictions

“…Surfactants are added to displacing fluid to decrease IFT between oil and injected recovery fluid to enhance trapped oil recovery through tight pore necks and low-permeability zones of reservoirs [3,35,44]. However, these solutions are not capable of withstanding the harsh conditions of reservoirs.…”

“…The mineral components of rock formations play a key role in reaction with and absorption of surfactants. Moreover, cleaning the surfactants emulsions and disposal treatment of them remain a challenge [44,45]. Materials containing alkaline components can react with the acid portion of the crude oil.…”