Experimental Investigation on Spontaneous Imbibition of Surfactant Mixtures in Low Permeability Reservoirs

Huan Wang; Qing You; Tiantian Zhang; Caspar Daniel Adenutsi; Mingwei Gao

doi:10.1021/acsomega.3c00973

Experimental Investigation on Spontaneous Imbibition of Surfactant Mixtures in Low Permeability Reservoirs

ACS Omega. 2023 Apr 4;8(15):14171-14176. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.3c00973. eCollection 2023 Apr 18.

Authors

Huan Wang^{1

2}, Qing You^{1

2}, Tiantian Zhang^{1

2}, Caspar Daniel Adenutsi³, Mingwei Gao⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Energy Resources, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China.
² Beijing Key Laboratory of Unconventional Natural Gas Geological Evaluation and Development Engineering, Beijing 100083, China.
³ Core and Rock Properties Laboratory, Department of Petroleum Engineering, Faculty of Civil and Geo-Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi MC9M+9VJ, Ghana.
⁴ School of Petroleum Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, Shandong 266580, China.

Abstract

Spontaneous imbibition of surfactants could efficiently enhance oil recovery in low permeability sandstone reservoirs. The majority of studies have considered the application of individual surfactants to alter wettability and reduce interfacial tension (IFT). However, a significant synergistic effect has been reported between different types of surfactants and between salts and surfactants. Therefore, this study systematically studied the capability of a binary surfactant mixture (anionic/nonionic) and a ternary surfactant mixture (anionic/nonionic/strong base-weak acid salt) in imbibition enhanced oil recovery (IEOR). The interfacial properties and the cores' wettability were explored by IFT and contact angle measurements, respectively. Subsequently, the imbibition performances of different types of surfactant solutions were discussed. The results suggested that the surfactants' potential to enhance oil recovery followed the order of ternary surfactant mixture > binary surfactant mixture > anionic > nonionic > amphoteric > polymer. The ternary surfactant mixture exhibited strong capacity to reverse the rock surface from oil-wet (125°) to strongly water-wet (3°), which was more significant than both binary surfactant mixtures and individual surfactants. In addition, the ternary surfactant mixture led to an ultralow IFT value of 0.0015 mN/m, achieving the highest imbibition efficiency (45% OOIP). This research puts forward some new ideas on the application of the synergistic effects of surfactants in IEOR from low-permeability sandstone reservoirs.