The Influence of Rock Composition and pH on Reservoir Wettability for Low-Salinity Water-CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery Applications in Brazilian Reservoirs
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Summary Low-salinity waterflooding and carbon dioxide (CO2) injection are enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods that are currently increasing in use worldwide. Linking these two EOR methods is a promising approach in the exploration of mature fields and for post- and presalt basins in Brazil. Moreover, the latter reservoirs already exhibit a high CO2 content by nature. Interfacial phenomena between fluids and rock in a low-salinity water-CO2 (LSW-CO2) environment remain unclear, particularly the wettability behavior that is related to the pH of the medium, among others. This study investigates the influence of rock composition and pH of the brine on reservoir wettability through coreflooding and zeta potential experiments in LSW and determination of contact angles and interfacial tension (IFT) in the crude oil-LSW-CO2 system at reservoir conditions. Brazilian light crude oil, pure CO2, and brine solutions of different concentrations and compositions were used to represent the fluids in actual oil reservoirs. The experiments were carried out on Botucatu sandstone, Indiana limestone, and calcite crystal samples, with mineralogy determined by energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. Coreflooding experiments were conducted by the injection of 10 pore volumes (PVs) of fourfold diluted synthetic reservoir brine (SRB), followed by 10 PVs of 40-fold diluted SRB to evaluate the low-salinity effects. Interfacial properties, such as contact angle and IFT, as well as density and pH, were determined at elevated pressures to evaluate the synergistic effects between CO2 and salt content. In addition, geochemical modeling using PH REdox EQuilibrium (in C language) (PHREEQC) was performed to predict the in-situ pH and match with the experimental data. An increase in oil recovery and pH of the effluent was observed in the coreflooding experiments during diluted SRB injection. The ionic concentrations of the effluent samples also indicated illite dissolution. Furthermore, zeta potential measurements confirmed the expansion of the water film and shift from positive to negative surface charge of Botucatu sandstone for salt concentrations less than 80,000 mg/L at pH > 7, whereas in Indiana limestone, negative surface charge was only observed in deionized water at pH > 9. These observations indicate that during LSW injection alone, an increase in pH will favor a thicker water layer on the Botucatu sandstone surface that in turn increases water wettability and results in increased oil recovery. Conversely, the presence of CO2 in LSW causes a decrease in the pH of the medium, which is related to further enhancing water wettability when linking pH with contact angle measurements. It seems that a change in the pH of the brine induced by CO2 solubility in LSW enhanced interactions between the rock surface and water molecules. The respective interfacial energy then decreased, resulting in a decreasing water contact angle. It was also noticed that seawater-CO2 systems caused salt precipitation and mineralogical changes in carbonate and sandstone rock induced by calcite and kaolinite dissolution, respectively. This study contributes substantially to the understanding of interfacial properties and wettability behavior in LSW-CO2 systems, facilitating the design of LSW-CO2 EOR applications in Brazilian fields or even CO2 storage. Moreover, the study provides useful data for oil companies that have acquired mature wells and exploration blocks in Brazil, supporting them in operational and investment decisions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".