Permanent Alteration of Porous Media Wettability from Liquid-Wetting to Intermediate Gas-Wetting

Wu, Stanley; Firoozabadi, Abbas

doi:10.1007/s11242-010-9554-3

Cited by 66 publications

(62 citation statements)

References 38 publications

(39 reference statements)

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“…Noh and Firoozabadi (2008) used an alcohol-based surfactant polymer solution to study the wettability alteration to intermediate gas wetting, with experimental results showing a considerable increase in water mobility. More recently, Wu and Firoozabadi (2010) demonstrated the permanency of the wettability alteration by providing a chemical reaction between rock and new chemicals having various functional groups.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wettability Alteration of Reservoir Rocks from Liquid Wetting to Gas Wetting Using Nanofluid

et al. 2015

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Well productivity in gas condensate reservoirs is reduced by condensate banking when the bottom hole flowing pressure drops below the dew point pressure. Among the several methods which have been proposed for condensate removal, wettability alteration of reservoir rock to intermediate gas wetting in the near wellbore region appears to be one of the most promising techniques. In this work, we report use of a nanofluid to change the wettability of the carbonate and sandstone rocks to intermediate gas wetting. Application of nanofluid in the wettability alteration of carbonate and sandstone rocks to gas wetting has not been reported previously and is still an ongoing subject. Static and dynamic contact angle measurements, along with imbibition tests, have been performed to investigate the wettability of carbonate and sandstone rocks in presence of nanofluid. It was found that the nanofluid used in this work can considerably change the wettability of both surfaces to preferentially gas wetting in just one day of ageing time. We also report the effect of initial oil saturation and ageing time on the nanofluid capability for wettability change. Initial oil saturation reduces the impact of the nanofluid on wettability change, and hence, a pre-treatment before using nanofluid is necessary. In addition to these small slab-scale experiments, applicability of nanofluid in wettability alteration of sandstone rocks to gas wetting is also investigated in core scale. The results of core displacement tests confirm the ability of nanofluid to change the rock wettability from liquid wetting to gas wetting in core samples. They also show the effectiveness of chemical treatment in subsurface conditions.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wettability Alteration of Reservoir Rocks from Liquid Wetting to Gas Wetting Using Nanofluid

et al. 2015

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“…The contact angle of water on the rocks treated with these three reference nanofluids was obtained ˃160 ° while 150 ° is the best result for water contact angle on the rock reported until now [5,6]. It is worth noting that the reference nanofluids also could interestingly create coatings with self-cleaning property on the rock samples which fluoro-polymers/surfactants [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and fluorinated nanosilica solutions [35] were not able to do.…”

Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many researchers have made contributions toward using various fluorinated polymers or surfactants to change the wetting nature of a series of chalk and sandstone rocks [2][3][4][5][6][7]. As a result, they demonstrated that wettability alteration had substantial effect on improving liquid mobility and gas productivity of treated rocks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wettability alteration of carbonate rocks from liquid-wetting to ultra gas-wetting using TiO 2 , SiO 2 and CNT nanofluids containing fluorochemicals, for enhanced gas recovery

Esmaeilzadeh

Sadeghi

Fakhroueian

et al. 2015

Journal of Natural Gas Science and Engineering

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“…The wettability alteration as a result of the adsorption of the treatment chemicals onto the core surface is believed to have only a small effect on the reduction of the absolute permeability of a core sample. However, some chemicals cause a reduction in the absolute permeability of a porous medium when the permeability of core samples is less than 1 Darcy (Fahes and Firoozabadi 2007;Noh and Firoozabadi 2008;Wu and Firoozabadi 2010). Silane compounds with a low molecular weight have negligible effect on the absolute permeability reduction of a core sample during the wettability alteration process (Wu and Firoozabadi 2010).…”

Section: Oil Production Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, some chemicals cause a reduction in the absolute permeability of a porous medium when the permeability of core samples is less than 1 Darcy (Fahes and Firoozabadi 2007;Noh and Firoozabadi 2008;Wu and Firoozabadi 2010). Silane compounds with a low molecular weight have negligible effect on the absolute permeability reduction of a core sample during the wettability alteration process (Wu and Firoozabadi 2010). The increase in the live oil production rate with the oil-wet beads composition is expected to be a result of better wetting conditions in the oil-wet regions.…”

Section: Oil Production Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Reservoir Wettability on the Production Characteristics of the VAPEX Process: An Experimental Study

et al. 2011

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The impact of fractional wettability on the production characteristics of a VAPEX process at the macroscale was investigated. Conventional VAPEX experiments were conducted in a 220 Darcy random packing of glass beads in a rectangular physical model and n-pentane was used to recover the Cold Lake bitumen from the oil-saturated model in the absence of connate water. The composition of oil-wet beads in the packed bed was altered from completely water-wet beads to completely oil-wet beads at different proportions of oil-wet beads mixed with water-wet beads. A substantial increase (about 40%) in the production rate of live oil was observed during the VAPEX process when the wettability of the porous packing was entirely oil-wet beads. A critical oil-wet fraction of 0.66 was found for the heterogeneous packing of water-wet and oil-wet beads of similar size distribution. Above this critical composition, the live oil production rate was not affected by further increase in the proportion of the oil-wet beads. It is believed that above this critical composition of the oil-wet beads, the crevice flow process is dominated by the continuity of higher conductivity live oil films between particles through the oil-wet regions. Below this critical composition, the live oil production rate increased linearly with the fraction of the oil-wet beads in the packing. The oil-wet regions favor the live oil drainage compared to that of the water-wet regions as they enhance the rate of imbibition of the live oil from the oil-filled pores to the vacated pores near the nominal VAPEX interface. These two factors enhance the live oil production rate during the VAPEX process. The solvent content of the live oil, the solvent-to-oil ratio (SOR), and the residual oil saturation did not correlate strongly with the proportion of the oil-wet beads in the packing. The average solvent content of the live oil and the residual oil saturation were measured to be 48% by weight and 7% by volume respectively.

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Permanent Alteration of Porous Media Wettability from Liquid-Wetting to Intermediate Gas-Wetting

Cited by 66 publications

References 38 publications

Wettability Alteration of Reservoir Rocks from Liquid Wetting to Gas Wetting Using Nanofluid

Wettability Alteration of Reservoir Rocks from Liquid Wetting to Gas Wetting Using Nanofluid

Wettability alteration of carbonate rocks from liquid-wetting to ultra gas-wetting using TiO 2 , SiO 2 and CNT nanofluids containing fluorochemicals, for enhanced gas recovery

The Effect of Reservoir Wettability on the Production Characteristics of the VAPEX Process: An Experimental Study

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