Evaluation of enhanced oil recovery from clay-rich sandstone formations

In the last few years, there has been a growing interest in smart water (SW) flooding as economically and environmentally friendly method to Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) in sandstone and carbonated reservoirs. Formation damage especially fines migration and clay swelling by lowering salinity and changing the ionic environment, causes the significant decrease in permeability of the sandstone reservoirs. In this study, an experimental study has been undertaken to illuminate the effect of formation damage during smart water injection as the function of clay types. The state of the art procedure has been established in direction of sandpack construction containing favorable clay content. Injection of smart water was performed in sandpacks with different clay types (montmorillonite and kaolinite). The results show that the presence of montmorillonite augments formation damage and enhances oil recovery. Analyzing Interfacial Tension (IFT) experimental data showed that interaction of oil/SW had no great influence on increasing oil recovery. The results have been achieved based on extensive experiments including Differential Pressure (DP) measurements, Zeta potential, and Recovery Factor (RF). Two mechanisms were proposed to interpret permeability reduction and amount of oil produced values which are clay swelling, and detachment/re-attachment for montmorillonite and kaolinite, respectively.Armin Bazyari, Mohammad Jamialahmadi, Bahram Soltani Soulgani and Abbas Zeinijahrom