A Temperature Operating Window Concept for Application of Nonionic Surfactants for EOR in Unconventional Shale Reservoirs
Authors: Saputra I Wayan Rakananda , Schechter David S. 
Published: September 2021

Surfactant performance is a function of its hydrophobic tail, and hydrophilic head in combination with crude oil composition, brine salinity, rock composition, and reservoir temperature. Specifically, for nonionic surfactants, temperature is a dominant variable due to the nature of the ethylene oxide (EO) groups in the hydrophilic head known as the cloud point temperature. This study aims to highlight the existence of temperature operating window for nonionic surfactants to optimize oil recovery during EOR applications in unconventional reservoirs.

Two nonylphenol (NP) ethoxylated nonionic surfactants with different EO head groups were investigated in this study. A medium and light grade crude oil were utilized for this study. Core plugs from a carbonate-rich outcrop and a quartz-rich outcrop were used for imbibition experiments. Interfacial tension and contact angle measurements were performed to investigate the effect of temperature on the surfactant interaction in an oil/brine and oil/brine/rock system respectively. Finally, a series of spontaneous imbibition experiments was performed on three temperatures selected based on the cloud point of each surfactant in order to construct a temperature operating window for each surfactant.

Both nonionic surfactants were observed to improve oil recovery from the two oil-wet oil/rock system tested in this study. The improvement was observed on both final recovery and rate of spontaneous imbibition. However, it was observed that each nonionic surfactant has its optimum temperature operating window relative to the cloud point of that surfactant. For both nonionic surfactants tested in this study, this window begins from the cloud point of the surfactant up to 25°F above the cloud point. Below this operating window, the surfactant showed subpar performance in increasing oil recovery. This behavior is caused by the thermodynamic equilibrium of the surfactant at this temperature which drives the molecule to be more soluble in the aqueous-phase as opposed to partitioning at the interface. Above the operating window, surfactant performance was also inferior. Although for this condition, the behavior is caused by the preference of the surfactant molecule to be in the oleic-phase rather than the aqueous-phase. One important conclusion is the surfactant achieved its optimum performance when it positions itself on the oil/water interface, and this configuration is achieved when the temperature of the system is in the operating window mentioned above. Additionally, it was also observed that the 25°F operating window varies based on the characteristic of the crude oil.

A surfactant study is generally performed on a single basin, with a single crude oil on a single reservoir temperature or even on a proxy model at room temperature. This study aims to highlight the importance of applying the correct reservoir temperature when investigating nonionic surfactant behavior. Furthermore, this study aims to introduce a temperature operating window concept for nonionic surfactants. This work demonstrates that there is not a "one size fits all" surfactant design.