Abstract
Barite is one of the most common mineral scales in the oilfield and its formation can sequester toxic strontium (Sr) and radium (Ra). Various scale inhibitors are widely used to inhibit its formation. The inhibition efficiencies of 18 common inhibitors were tested using an improved kinetic turbidity method over broad oil and gas production conditions. A theoretical and a semi-empirical barite crystallization and inhibition model were developed for the 18 most used scale inhibitors. Both models can work under a broad range of production conditions and are carefully reviewed against all available experimental data. These models have shown wide applications in industrial operations, field testing, and laboratory testing. Using the new models and testing method, a novel fast inhibitor performance testing method was proposed and validated. Furthermore, the barite crystallization and inhibition models also work well to predict the inhibition performance of mixed inhibitors. This study not only advanced barite scale inhibition in an efficiency and low-cost way during oil and gas production, but also provided new insights on understanding the fate and transport of toxic Sr and Ra.
Highlights
During oil and gas production, various mineral scales can be formed in the pipelines [1,2,3,4,5]
Barite scale is hard to be dissolved in acids and it can be expensive to be removed through mechanics approaches [8,9]
Kinetic turbidity measurement with laser apparatus has been proved to be an efficient, sensitive, and low-cost approach to study the kinetics of barite scales in the absence and presence of inhibitors
Summary
During oil and gas production, various mineral scales (e.g., sulfate, carbonate, and sulfide scales) can be formed in the pipelines [1,2,3,4,5]. Previous studies showed that the inhibitors could prolong the induction time (tinh ) of barite scale formation through adsorbing or precipitating onto barite nuclei (or pre-nucleation clusters) and crystal surface. He et al proposed a semi-empirical equation to predict the induction time without (t0 ) and with inhibitors (tinh ). To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies to unify these models by including all available data over a broad range of oil and gas production conditions To fill these information gaps, for the first time, this study summarized all available barite inhibition experimental data with 18 commonly used scale inhibitors and models over 20 years and further advanced and unified the prediction models. The application and values of the prediction models of this study were discussed from the aspects of field case studies, generic chemicals, and mixed inhibitors
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