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Literature Review
Literature Review
and almost every significant oil field that does not have a natural water drive
has been, is being,
This review of LSW literature highlights the need for a more systematic study
of the process and for developing a mechanistic model for design, prediction,
and optimization of LSW at both the laboratory and field scales.
. However, while both laboratory and field studies have had successful
results, there are also examples in which low-salinity flooding does not create
additional production (Sharma and Filoco 2000, Rivet et al 2010,
Skrettingland et al. 2010)[15,16,17]. During the last two decades a
significant body of evidence has accumulated, indicating that recovery from
sandstone oil reservoirs could be improved by lowering the ionic strength of
the injection brine (reviewed in Morrow and Buckley 2011)[18]. Benefits of
low salinity as opposed to high salinity water flooding have been supported
by numerous laboratory tests (reviewed in Sheng 2010)[19], Log-Inject-Log
trial (Webb et al. 2004)[3], single well chemical tracer tests (McGuire et al.
2005)[20], and historical data (Vledder 2010)[21]. An extensively discussed
mechanism behind this low salinity phenomenon in sandstones is wettability
alteration of the clay minerals towards a more water-wet state which in turn
improves microscopic sweep by modifying oil and water relative
permeabilities (Ligthelm et al. 2009)[22]. Despite growing interest in low
salinity flooding, a consistent explanation of the wettability alteration
mechanism has not yet emerged. However, it is generally accepted in the
industry that injecting brine with TDS (Totally Dissolved Solids) below 5,000
ppm leads to additional oil recovery whereas injection of more saline water
will not (Webb et al. 2005)[5].
combining polymer with LSW for EOR. The idea is that the use of low-salinity
EOR can make use of polyacrylamide polymer, which is effective at reservoir
temperatures up to 100oC, and can
to model the combination of these two processes. This model was tested in
both heterogeneous
polymers (or less) was required for polymer floods that employ low-salinity
brine as the base
fluid compared with those that use high-salinity brine as the base fluid. The
LSW model used in
this research, however, originally came from Jerauld et al. (2008) with a
simple interpolation of
earlier.
only simple case studies to compare the ion exchange between UTCHEM-
IPHREEQC and the
exchange model used in UTCHEM-IPHREEQC was adapted from the one used
in the original
IPRHEEQC module. The results from this model should be validated against
coreflood