Oil recovery tests with ionic liquids: A review and evaluation of 1-decyl-3-methylimidazolium triflate

Abstract

The main advantages of the use of ionic liquids in enhanced oil recovery are their tunability and stability in harsh environmental conditions. In this work, a comprehensive review of ionic liquids proposed to improve current chemical oil recovery methods has been presented, focusing on core flooding experiments. With an almost infinite number of possible ionic liquids, the amount of experiments carried out up to now has been very limited. However, results are promising, with additional recovery after secondary flooding of up to 32% of the original oil in place. Most formulations with ionic liquids have been proposed for sandstone reservoirs, the number of studies with carbonate cores being very scarce. The possibilities of a new room temperature surface active ionic liquid, 1-decyl-3-methylimidazolium triflate, for this application were analyzed. It was shown that it is able to drastically reduce the water/oil interfacial tension. An optimized formulation was proposed for carbonate reservoirs. After secondary flooding with brine, an additional recovery of 10.5% of original oil in place was achieved at room conditions. A combination of the proposed method followed by a polymer flooding step with polyacrylamide led to a lesser but still significant recovery, reducing the costs associated to the ionic liquid.