Adsorption of Novel Nonionic Surfactant and Particles Mixture in Carbonates: Enhanced Oil Recovery Implication

Abstract

Over 40% of the current world conventional oil production comes from carbonate reservoirs, dominantly mature and declining giant oilfields. After primary and secondary oil production stages using tertiary oil production methods as part of an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) scheme is inevitable. Surfactant flooding aims at reducing the mobility ratio through lowering the interfacial tension between oil and water and mobilizing the residual oil. This article highlights the adsorption equilibrium of the combination of different types of nanosilica and Zyziphus Spina Christi, a novel surfactant, in aqueous solutions for EOR and reservoir stimulation purposes. A conductivity technique was used to assess the adsorption of the surfactant and nanosilica in the aqueous phase. Batch experiments were used to understand the effect of adsorbent dose on sorption efficiency as well. The adsorption data were examined using four different adsorption isotherm models (Langmuir, Freundlich, Temkin, and Linear), and the adsorption parameters were determined for each model. This study suggests that a Freundlich isotherm model can satisfactorily estimate the adsorption behavior of combination nanosilica and surfactant adsorption on carbonates. Results from this study can help in appropriate selection of surfactants in the design of EOR schemes and reservoir stimulation plans in carbonate reservoirs.

Performance improvement of ionic surfactant flooding in carbonate rock samples by use of nanoparticles

“…It should be mentioned here that to determine the amount of adsorption loss of the addressed ionic surfactant onto the reservoir rock samples, a batch test was used. Due to this fact, the weight of the crushed rock samples and the volume of the aqueous solution with different surfactant concentrations should be consistent for all the adsorption experiments as illustrated in Ahmadi and Shadizadeh (2012, 2013a, c, 2015. Two more crucial points should be mentioned: First, the equilibrium time of adsorption was about 24 h, so adsorption experiments were conducted for 24 h. Second, the mass ratio of the surfactant solution to the crushed rock was 5:1.…”

“…To evaluate adsorption of the ionic surfactant in the presence of different silica nanoparticles, two core samples were crushed using a jaw crusher and then passed through specific sieves (50-70 mesh size) for repeatability of the experiments and to double check our adsorption experiments (Salari et al 2011;Ahmadi and Shadizadeh 2012, 2013a, b, c, 2015Ahmadi et al 2014;Zendehboudi et al 2013). X-ray diffraction (XRD) was conducted to analyze the phase composition of the core samples, and the results are shown in Fig.…”

“…According to the procedure of adsorption experiments reported by Ahmadi and his colleagues (Ahmadi and Shadizadeh 2012, 2013c, 2015Zendehboudi et al 2013) and Salari et al (2011), the depletion solution or batch tests were conducted to indicate adsorption behavior of the ionic surfactant on the carbonate surface in the presence of silica nanoparticles. Two crucial points of the proposed adsorption experiments are the adsorption equilibrium time and the ratio of the solid and aqueous phases.…”

“…As noted previously, the conductivity of the aqueous solution was utilized to indicate the surfactant concentration before and after adsorption loss onto the rock surface. For more details about the procedure of conductivity measurement for adsorption experiments, the authors referred to Ahmadi and Shadizadeh (2012, 2013a, c, 2015. Finally, the magnitude of the surfactant loss onto the rock surface (in terms of mg surfactant/g of rock) was calculated from the following formulation (Salari et al 2011;Ahmadi and Shadizadeh 2012, 2013c, 2015Zendehboudi et al 2013):…”

Improving Recovery Through Surfactant Desorption on An Oil Wet Limestone Reservoir

“…At specific concentration, the micelle will appear with its lowest size leads to lower IFT at optimum. The concentration, where IFT is minimum is considered to be critical micelle concentration of that surfactant can be analyzed by conductivity [13].…”