Effect of sodium hydroxide, sodium dodecyl benzenesulfonate, and resin on the interfacial tension of asphaltenic synthetic oil extracted from acidic crude oil under low salinity condition

Abstract

During the past years, the usage of new oil recovery methods known as enhanced oil recovery methods is increasing because of energy consumption rate enhancement and reservoir pressure depletion. Unfortunately, since most of the investigations were focused on crude oil, it is hard to find a generalized pattern of interfacial tension (IFT) and wettability change for different crude oils because of its complicated composition. So, it is necessary to examine the effect of specific fractions of crude oil especially resin and asphaltene fractions on the IFT and wettability alteration using systematic investigations. Although a limited number of investigations examined the interactions between these specific fractions and salts, there are no systematic reports respecting the possible interactions between asphaltene and resin fractions in the presence of alkaline and surfactant. So, in the first stage, the impact of dissolving asphaltene (0–9 wt%) in the toluene was investigated on the IFT reduction which revealed a decrease in IFT value from 34.8 to 23.3 mN/m as the asphaltene concentration was increased. Further experiments showed that the presence of MgCl2 and NaCl with a maximum concentration of 5000 ppm led to a reduction in IFT to a minimum value of 18.3 and 17.3 mN/m for NaCl and MgCl2, respectively, which means the higher impact of MgCl2 on the IFT reduction. After that, the selected optimum concentrations of MgCl2 and NaCl (5000 ppm) were used in the rest of the experiments in which the effect of resin fraction and other chemicals including sodium dodecyl benzenesulfonate (SDBS) and NaOH concentrations was examined on the IFT reduction and rock wettability. According to the obtained results, it was possible to reach the minimum IFT value of 0.08 mN/m, which is several orders lower than the original IFT value of the binary system without the chemicals using the optimum chemical formulation obtained by mixing proper concentrations of SDBS, NaOH, MgCl2, and NaCl. Moreover, the obtained optimum formulations were used through core flooding experiments which revealed the possibility of increasing the oil recovery to a maximum value of 10.1% based on the original oil in place.