Simulation of Wettability Alteration by Low-Salinity Water Injection in Waterflooded Carbonate Cores

Abstract

Low-salinity water injection is an emerging improved oil recovery technique due to its simplicity compared to other water based improved oil recovery methods. In this study, the wettability alteration option in the authors’ in-house simulator is used to history match and provide some insights in different seawater dilution cycles based on recently published corefloods. Two newly proposed methodologies to model dilution cycles are employed. The authors successfully modeled the experiments enhancing the wettability alteration model in the simulator using two different scaling factors. The study also revealed that the process is more sensitive to oil relative permeability compared to that of the water phase. A linear interpolation model for residual oil saturation (Sor) was proposed.