EFFECT OF SALINITY ON SURFACTANT BEHAVIOR DURING MICELLAR / POLYMER FLOODING METHOD

Abstract

The valuable and expensive surfactants used in micellar I polymer flooding projects suffer from loss due to precipitation, cation exchange phenomena, adsorption onto reservoir rock grain surfaces and others. Such losses can render surfactant enhanced oil recovery projects very costly and uneconomical. The cost of any micellar I polymer flooding project is mainly influenced by the slug concentration, which can be controlled based on the surfactant behavior during the flooding process.

The present work concentrates on the laboratory study of the characterization of a given surfactant and its chemical behavior at different water salinities with the presence of different cations. A computer program is used to simulate the laboratory results for better understanding of the surfactant behavior. The simulated and experimental results for the used surfactant are well matched even at high salinities (100,000 ppm).