Alkaline Waterflooding for Wettability Alteration-Evaluating a Potential Field Application
Authors: Ehrlich R. , Hasiba H.H. , Raimondi P. 
Published: December 2007

This procedure, in which the wettability change is assumed to be the important enhanced recovery mechanism, is recommended for determining the applicability alkaline waterflooding in specific light-oil reservoir systems.

Introduction

The wettability of petroleum reservoir rock, its estimation in laboratory tests, and its effect on the displacement of oil by water have been the subject of a considerable and growing body of literature. Craig presented an excellent review of developments in this presented an excellent review of developments in this field so another discussion will not be given here. Recent investigators generally agree that preferred wettability is not a discrete-valued function, oil-wet or water-wet, but can span a continuum between these extremes. It has been demonstrated with artificial wettability systems using low-viscosity oils that waterflooding to a given water-oil ratio (WOR) becomes increasingly more efficient as a sand becomes more water-wet. It is not altogether certain, however, that waterflooding under strongly water-wet conditions is always most efficient in real reservoir systems. An example of this is given by Salathiel, who found lower residual oil saturations in mixed wettability systems than would occur under strongly water-wet conditions. This effect was attributed to gravity drainage across bedding planes. Most recently, Treiber el al. noted that a large number of reservoirs are more oil-wet than water-wet.It has generally been found, however, that causing a reservoir to become more water-wet by chemical means during the course of a waterflood results in an increase in oil recovery over that of an unaltered displacement by water alone. This has been demonstrated by Wagner and Leach, and by Leach et al. using a refined oil containing an amine to simulate an oil-wet system and an aqueous acid solution to reverse wettability. Mungan and Emery et al. obtained the same result using a sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solution to alter the wettability of a crude oil-brine-sand system. Alkaline waterflooding has been found under certain circumstances to increase oil production by low interfacial tension displacement and by rigid film breaking as well as by favorable wettability alteration.Two types of screening procedures for recovery estimation have been reported, both of which attempt to duplicate reservoir wettability by contacting oil, water, and mineral for long periods of time. A contact-angle measurement technique was described for wettability and wettability alteration estimation and for wettability estimation alone. The measurement is made after water displaces oil from a plane mineral surface in contact with the oil for various times. To obtain no further changes, the aging times required varied from 200 to 2,400 hours for different reservoir systems. The amount of additional oil obtainable by an alkaline waterflood is inferred from the difference between the normal water-oil-solid and alkaline water-oil-solid contact angles. This type of test can only estimate wettability-change increased production. production. JPT

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