Study on the Mechanism of Enhancing Oil Recovery by Molecular Film Displacement

Abstract

Molecular film displacement is a new nanofilm EOR technique. A large number of experiments show that the mechanism of molecular film displacement is different from conventional chemical displacement (polymer, surfactant, alkali and ASP displacement etc). With water solution acting as transfer medium, molecules of the filming agent develop the force to form films through electrostatic interaction, with efficient molecules deposited on the negatively charged rock surface to form ultrathin films at nanometer scale. This change the properties of reservoir surface and the interaction condition with crude oil, making the oil easily be displaced as the pores swept by the injected fluid. Thus oil recovery is enhanced. The mechanism of molecular filming agent mainly includes absorption, wettability alteration, diffusion and capillary imbibition etc.