Study on thermo-chemical
impact on Crude Oil Recovery
Amte Ayesha Siddiqua Rahman and Neog Dhrubajyoti
Res. J. Chem. Environ.; Vol. 29(3); 7-12;
doi: https://doi.org/10.25303/293rjce07012; (2025)
Abstract
The conventional methods of crude oil recovery with primary and secondary measures
are often found incapable in older oil-fields. Thermal-recovery is one of the most
widely used EOR techniques. Many previous studies observed that an increase in reservoir
temperature leads to a transition in rock wettability from an oil-wet to a water-wet
state. The effect of temperature on wettability-alteration is a result of several
contributing parameters that include fluid/rock and fluid/fluid interactions. This
study considers a heavy crude-oil from an upper Assam oil-field to evaluate the
feasibility of producing with low-salinity water flooding under thermo-chemical-mechanism.
The research work first characterizes the porous media by evaluating the petrophysical
properties. Following this, crude oil has been characterized to identify the physical
characteristics and for classification of crude oil. Both low-salinity and high-salinity-brine-water
were then employed to undertake surface-interaction and core-flooding analysis to
observe how it interacts with the heavy crude-oil. Finally, the work examines if
wettability-alteration has resulted while undergoing interaction at a temperature
equal to the reservoir temperature of the well from which porous- media and reservoir-fluids
were acquired for the analysis. The findings of the work highlight the merits of
each method and how the applied treatment can enhance oil recovery.
