EXPERIMENTAL INJECTION STRATEGY FOR SURFACTANT FLOODING ENHANCED BY BRANCHED ALCOHOL ADDITIVE

There are few limitations in using surfactant/co-surfactant such as the interfacial
activity, adsorption and ionic equilibria which can be control by manipulating the
formulation of the injected solution. Other limitations which can be controlled by
injection strategy were chromatographic effect, mobility control, flow diversion by
precipitates and emulsification. By using the optimum formulation, the first part of
the limitations can be reduced. And the second part of limitations can be overcome
by investigating the best or optimum method for injecting optimum formulation. The
objective of this study is to find the optimum injection strategy of a well formulated
surfactant and co-surfactant in enhancing residual oil recovery. Already several
methods had been proposed for surfactant / co-surfactant flooding, in this study,
topic will be narrowed to, to find the best injection strategy for surfactant flooding
with branched alcohol as co-surfactant. Result will be presented on the percentage of
residual oil recovered by using different method of injection.
Below are the injection strategies which are to be tested. Injection strategies which to
be study are:
1) Surfactant and branched alcohol mixed in single formation then followed by
chase water
2) Surfactant followed by branched alcohol then followed by chase water
3) Branched alcohol followed by surfactant then followed by chase water
Methodology used in this study is based on coreflooding experiment. Briefly, the
experiment will be conducted using three (3) Barea cores. Each core first preflooded
with synthetic brine at optimum salinity and hardness to saturate the core with brine.
Core then will be flooded with crude oil to displace the brine. Then, core will
undergo water flooding to displace the crude oil injected to the core. Residual oil
saturation then can be calculated from the volume of water produced after the water
flood, volume of oil produced during the water flood and pore volume of the core.
All the cores then will be injected with chemicals using different methods. The
effluent recovered will be measure and the efficiency of each method will be
calculated.