What is alkaline surfactant polymer flooding?

Alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) flooding is a Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery (CEOR) method whereby alkali, surfactant and polymer are injected as the same slug. Alkaline chemicals generate soap when reacting with crude oil, which reduces surfactant adsorption to grain surfaces.

What is alkaline polymer?

In an alkaline-polymer system, alkali creates a high pH environment and thus alter the charge density on the rock surface to more negative charge. As a result, polymer adsorption is reduced (Krumrine and Falcone 1987; Chen et al. 1999; Kazempour et al.

What is alkaline flooding?

Alkaline flooding (caustic flooding) is an enhanced oil recovery technique in which an alkaline chemical, such as sodium hydroxide, sodium orthosilicate, or sodium carbonate, is injected during water flooding or during polymer flooding operations.

What is polymer flooding?

Polymer flooding is an EOR method that uses polymer solutions to increase oil recovery by decreasing the water/oil mobility ratio by increasing the viscosity of the displacing water. In polymer flooding, a water-soluble polymer is added into the floodwater. This increases the viscosity of water.

What is surfactant flooding?

Surfactant flooding is an important technique used in enhanced oil recovery to reduce the amount of oil in pore space of matrix rock. Surfactants are injected to mobilize residual oil by lowering the interfacial tension between oil and water and/or by the wettability alteration from oil-wet to water-wet.

What is chemical flooding?

A Introduction. Chemical flooding relies on the addition of one or more chemical compounds to an injected fluid either to reduce the interfacial tension between the reservoir oil and the injected fluid or to improve the sweep efficiency of the injected fluid.

What is EOR in oil and gas?

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is the practice of extracting oil from a well that has already gone through the primary and secondary stages of oil recovery. Depending on the price of oil, EOR techniques may not be economically viable.

What are the causes of surfactant retention?

Underlying mechanisms for surfactant retention include adsorption, phase-trapping, and precipitation.

What is micellar flooding?

Micellar-polymer (MP) flooding involves injection of micelle and polymer to the aqueous phase to reduce interfacial tension and polymer is added to control the mobility of the solution, which helps in increasing both displacement and volumetric sweep efficiency and thereby leads to enhanced oil recovery.

Why CO2 is used in EOR?

This process of injecting CO2 into existing oil fields is a well-known “enhanced oil recovery” (EOR) technique: the addition of CO2 increases the overall pressure of an oil reservoir, forcing the oil towards production wells. The idea of “carbon-negative” oil is attractive.

Why is EOR used?

Whether it is used after both primary and secondary recovery have been exhausted or at the initial stage of production, EOR restores formation pressure and enhances oil displacement in the reservoir. There are three main types of EOR, including chemical flooding, gas injection and thermal recovery.