Geochemical and hydrodynamic modeling of permeability impairment due to composite scale formation in porous media

Abstract

Injectivity decline due to mineral scale deposition in near wellbore region of water injection wells is one of the main challenging issues and have been widely reported in the literature. One of the main mechanisms of injectivity loss is incompatibility between injected and formation waters that may result in inorganic scale precipitation and subsequent deposition in porous media. Reliable reactive flow models to predict type and amount of scale along with permeability decline estimation allow planning and risk management of water flood projects.In this paper, we present a coupled geochemical and hydrodynamic model to simulate the scale precipitation and deposition of mineral scales in multicomponent aqueous systems which is able to predict type of scale and permeability decline in porous medium. Geochemical software was used to simulate reactions between injected and formation brine suspicions to risk of composite scale formation and hydrodynamic flow model was applied to predict subsequent permeability decline during water injection. High quality match of permeability decline in following of robust static modeling of mineral scale formation in multicomponent aqueous systems was achieved.