Archive | 2021
Evaluation and Optimization of Adsorption Reduction Strategies on Chemical EOR Economics
Abstract
\n This paper is dedicated to the selection of the most effective way of mitigating surfactant adsorption in chemical EOR flooding. Mitigation strategies based on either water treatment or adsorption inhibitors were benchmarked for a sea water injection brine, on both performances and economics aspects. Performances in surfactant adsorption reduction were evaluated by applying salinity and/or hardness gradient strategies through dedicated water softening techniques, such as reverse osmosis or nanofiltration. Adsorption inhibitor addition, which does not require any water treatment, was also assessed and optimized for comparison. For each scenario, a suitable surfactant formulation was designed and evaluated through phase diagrams, static adsorption and diphasic coreflood experiments. Then the real benefit of surfactant adsorption reduction on the overall EOR process economics (including the costs of chemicals and water treatment) was assessed depending on the selected strategy. Sea water was considered as the injection brine for this study as it is widely used in chemical EOR process and often suffers high surfactant adsorption level. It was found that residual oil saturation after chemical flooding (SORc) dropped from 29% to 7% by applying a hardness gradient through nanofiltration process while 4% was reached with reverse osmosis. Regarding costs and footprint however, nanofiltration was found to be more advantageous. Adsorption inhibitors addition met similar performances to nanofiltration-based process (SORc=7%) and could be a valuable option depending on injected volume (pilot or small deployment) or field location (off-shore) as they do not require water treatment plant investment. Overall, this study provides useful practical insights on both performances and economics for selecting the most adapted strategy depending on the considered field case.