-Experimental Investigation of the Impact of Smart Water and Surfactant Solution on Enhanced Oil Recovery in Carbonate Reservoirs

A considerable quantity of the world’s oil reserve is located in naturally fractured carbonate reservoirs, with very low oil recovery efficiency, due to their wettability abd tightness of matrix. Recovery efficiency can be improved considerably, if the reservoir rock wettability is changed from mostly oil-wet to water-wet, thus enhancing water imbibition into the oil saturated rock. Smart water is able to alter the carbonate rock wetability from oil-wet to intermediate to water-wet, and therefor, water imbibition into the rock matrix is facilitated. In this study, the effect of ions and different surfactants concentration in the smart water on the wettability state of carbonate rocks was investigated by contact angle measurements and spontaneous imbibition experiments. Imbibition experiments were performed at three temperature level(50, 70 and 90 C). The effect of ions, temperature, and surfactant concentration on the wettability alteration of carbonate rocks during spontaneous imbibition process were invistegated. The results showed that the presence of SO42- ions, the strongly affects the wetting state of carbonate rocks, and increasing SO42- concentration from 0.033 mol/l to 0.1 mol/l increased the oil recovery from 19% to 58%. Moreover, by increasing Mg2 concentration the oil recovery increases (from 19% to 23%). Also the presense of cationic surfactant C12TAB, strongly changed the wetting state of carbonate rocks, and also increased the oil recovery from 19% to 78%.