Abstract
Crude oil deposits as light/heavy form all over the world. With the continued depletion of the conventional crude and reserves trending heavier, the interest to maximise heavy oil recovery continues to emerge in importance. Ordinarily, the traditional oil recovery stages leave behind a large amount of heavy oil trapped in porous reservoir structure, making the imperative of additional or enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies. Besides, the integration of downhole in-situ upgrading along with oil recovery techniques not only improves the efficiency of production but also the quality of the produced oil, avoiding several surface handling costs and processing challenges. In this review, we present an outline of chemical agents underpinning these enabling technologies with a focus on the current approaches, new formulations and future directions.
Highlights
The world is caught up in the ever-increasing need for energy and reliance on fossil sources
The traditional oil recovery stages leave behind a large amount of heavy oil trapped in porous reservoir structure, making the imperative of additional or enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies
We present an outline of chemical agents underpinning these enabling technologies with a focus on the current approaches, new formulations and future directions
Summary
The world is caught up in the ever-increasing need for energy and reliance on fossil sources. Naphthenic acids are the major components of the total acid content of crude oil They are popular corrodents in oil refineries, the water-soluble, low molecular weight-naphthenic acids (C8-C12) can readily form industrially-desirable sodium naphthenate as shown in chemical Scheme 1. In the chemical EOR, chemical agents are applied to improve sweep efficiency without any influence on the chemical properties of the oil, while in the thermal upgrading methods, catalysts have the potential to assist recovery but the overall quality of the oil for use. 2.2 Surfactant flooding Surfactant composes of lipophobic site to which a lipophilic site is attached It may be anionic, cationic, nonionic or zwitterionic, depending upon the charge of its polar group. Scheme 1 Esterification of crude oil-based naphthenic acids to useful naphthenates
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