| dc.description.abstract | Alkaline Surfactant Polymer (ASP) process is a tertiary method of oil recovery that has promising results for future development. It has already been implemented in different areas of the United States such as Wyoming, west Texas, also in Canada and China. The success of this process depends on the proper combination of alkali, surfactant, and polymer and their compatibility with a reservoir. Therefore, the main objective of the proposed research is to identify chemical interactions between ASP chemicals and reservoir fluids and rock.
I hypothesize that testing different alkalis, polymers and surfactants will result not only in getting different profiles of rheological properties of ASP system, but also analyzing compatibility degrees of chemicals with formation fluids and rock properties such as rock wettability, oil mobility and sweep efficiency which will be affected by the designed ASP system. In this paper the results of chemical interactions between ASP chemicals and reservoir fluids are presented and the phenomena occurred are described. The experiments conducted are considered to be unique for a selected oil sample with certain values of API gravity, viscosity, and chemical composition.
Lab experiments conducted show the effect of polymer, alkali and surfactant addition to an aqueous solution. Polymers were tested with alkali as a function of shear rate for the purposes of the buildup water viscosity in EOR. Different types of alkali at different concentrations are tested for alkali optimal concentration determination. The effect of adding surfactant at different concentrations has been tested, and acidic number of tested oil sample was identified.
Polymers tested with alkali result in non-Newtonian behavior of the testing solution and display a shear thinning beneficial effect for the buildup water viscosity in EOR. The results show that acidic number of crude oil is a critical parameter that affects the optimal concentration for mixing chemicals and interfacial tension profile. The alkali and surfactant added to crude oil result in a significant reduction of interfacial tension and lead to increase of oil mobilization which is a desired output after ASP injection in EOR process. | en |
