Impact of Flood Rate, Salinity, and Wettabiliy on Waterflood Oil Recovery Using Lab-On-A-Chip Method

Abstract

Abstract Wettability, pore geometry, oil viscosity, and water salinity are among the factors with dominating effects on microscopic waterflood efficiency, and consequently on the ultimate oil recovery. Optimal oil recovery requires a great understanding of the nature and manipulation of these factors. Most early and more recent studies on the effects of these factors on waterflood oil recovery have not reached a consensus yet. To gain a better understanding of the effects of these factors on the microscopic performance of a waterflood process, experimental studies were conducted using Lab-on-a-chip method. The selected conditions for displacement efficiency comparisons include: mixed-wet and water-wet conditions, high and low viscous oils, three different waterflood rates ((0.05 μL/s, 0.1 μL/s, and 0.15 μL/s), and two different flood water types (sea water and distilled water). Two grain minerals were used in the experiments (calcite and quartz grains). Image processing technique was applied to analyse and compare the displacement efficiency in each experiment using an automated code developed with MATLAB. Experimental results showed that mixed-wet media, faster flood rate, low salinity flood water, and low viscous oil are favourable to waterflood oil recovery. This laboratory study also illustrates that a microfluidic chip can be successfully used for Enhance Oil Recovery (EOR) studies.