Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Surfactants play an important role to alter wettability in any reservoir. Adsorption of surfactants onto reservoir surface will reduce the contact between water and oil which indeed has less impact on Interfacial tension. Oil wet reservoirs are specifically preferred than water wet due to high oil saturation. At the same time extracting oil from oil wet reservoir is difficult due to its wetting nature. The only way to extract oil is by altering wettability from oil wet. The aim of this work is to extract more oil with less adsorption by altering oil wet to surfactant wet. Wettability of sandstone has been chosen to alter from oil wet to surfactant wet. Surfactants of low concentration, which is less than CMC (Critical Micelle Concentration) has been introduced before surfactant flooding during water flooding to make core surfactant wet. The recovery of oil during water flooding is 0.2 Pore Volume (PV). This has been increased to 0.5 pore volume by making it surfactant wet and adsorption has been reduced to 0.5 pore volumes.

Keywords: Adsorption, CMC, Surfactant Wet, Wettability