Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Professor, Department of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Abadan, Iran
2 M.S. Student, Department of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Abadan, Iran
Abstract
Oil recovery from oil wet carbonate rock is a big challenge in oil industry. In the present study, the influence of natural surfactant Hawthorn leaves extract (HLE) on oil recovery from carbonate rock is investigated. Two chemical surfactants include Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and Dodecyl tri methyl ammonium bromide (DTAB) were used for validation and comparison oil recovery with new natural surfactant HLE. Wettability alteration test using contact angle method, interfacial test (IFT) using pendant drop and core flooding were employed to investigate the behavior of the surfactants on oil recovery. Experimental results show the Critical Micellar Consentration (CMC) point of different concentrations of HLE, SDS and DTAB solution occurred at 3.25, 3 and 4.06 wt. %, respectively. The natural surfactant HLE was more effective than other chemical surfactant (SDS and DTAB) at CMC point in wettability alteration. As observed the contact angle of carbonate pellet and the HLE at CMC point was 86 degrees and this angle for SDS and DTAB were 112 and 92 degrees, respectively. Core flooding results show that oil recovery factor was improved from 37% with water flooding to 47.6 with SDS; 56.2% with DTAB and 54.7% with HLE. The results prove that; this new natural surfactant (HLE) can be used as a novel surfactant for chemical enhanced oil recovery process in carbonate oil reservoirs. HLE has beneficial effects in oil recovery because of its environment friendly compare to SDS and DTAB.
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