Laboratory Investigation of Low Salinity Waterflooding as Secondary Recovery Process: Effect of Wettability

Abstract

Abstract Laboratory studies along with field tests conducted over the decade reveal that reducing the salinity of water injected into reservoirs improves the oil recovery. Different phenomena e.g. increase in pH (alkalinity), fines migration, multi-component ionic exchange, etc., have been proposed by researchers for improved oil recovery during low salinity waterflooding (LSW). Though LSW has attracted attention among reservoir engineers as tertiary recovery process, limited studies have reported the potential of LSW as secondary recovery process. Also, the relationship between reservoir rock parameters such as wettability, rock minerals, etc. and oil recovery is not well established for LSW. The objective of this paper was to investigate the relationship between rock wettability and oil recovery with low salinity water injection as secondary recovery process. Coreflooding experiments have been performed at room conditions on Berea cores with four different wettabilities ranging from water- to oil- wet. Brines and n-decane were used as displacing and displaced phases, respectively. The results showed that, for all the salinities, oil recovery increases as wettability changes from water- to neutral- wet conditions. Further change in rock wettability from neutral- to oil-wet condition resulted in decreased oil recovery. It was also interesting to observe that oil recovery is higher for LSW as compared to high salinity waterflooding when used as secondary recovery process. Increase in pressure drop and hence decrease in effective permeability was also observed during LSW process in most of the cases considered.