ALKALINE-SURFACTANT FLOODING

PRESENTATION BY
PARTH DANKHARA (15BPE024)
DARSHAN HALARI (15BPE038)
DHAVAL PATEL (15BPE076)
DHRUV PATEL (15BPE077)
DHRUVDUTT PATEL (15BPE078)
 Primary Recovery

Natural Flow Artificial Lift

Secondary Recovery

Water Flooding
Water injection
Localized area which is
Injection of water by
flooded by water
aquifer support

1. Active water drive

2. Partial water drive
3. Limited water drive
• Enhanced oil recovery (abbreviated EOR) is the implementation of
various techniques for increasing the amount of crude oil that can be
extracted from an oil field.
• Enhanced oil recovery is also called tertiary recovery (as opposed to
primary and secondary recovery).

Tertiary Recovery

Thermal Gas injection Chemical & Other Alkaline

Steam CO2 Surfactant

Hot Water Hydrocarbon Microbial
Combustion N2 / Flue gas
ALKALI FLOODING
INTRODUCTION
• Alkaline flooding is also known as Caustic flooding.
• Alkaline is another method by which oil displacement efficiency can be
improved.
• This method of EOR requires the injection of alkaline chemicals such as
Sodium hydroxide, Sodium orthosillicate(Na4O4Si) or Sodium
carbonate(Na2CO3) into a reservoir. The effect produced in a reservoir
appears to be similar to that of micellar solutions. The difference is that
alkaline flooding reduces the interfacial tensions(IFT) with surfactants
generated in situ.
• Alkaline flooding process appears to be highly dependent on minerals on
the surface of reservoir , which are not chemically inert , and on the crude
oil and injection fluid characteristics.
• Alkaline agents are cost efficient materials, their use along with surfactant
and/or polymer, could reduce the amount of high-cost surfactant.
• A reevaluation of alkaline flooding is taking place in order to find ways to
reduce the reaction of alkaline agents with reservoir minerals and to take
advantage of the combine alkaline/surfactant mixture effect
METHOD DESCRIPTION

Fig-1 Schematic diagram of alkaline flood Injection

• The basic alkaline flooding process starts with a softened water
preflush injection followed by the injection of an alkaline solution of
about 10 to 30 percent PV and by continuous injection of drive
water.
• The injection of polymer slug behind the alkaline solution to control
mobility and to improve sweep efficiency is desirable (fig-1) If it is
cost effective. Because of the complexity of the mineralogy and
lithology of petroleum reservoir the possible reactions between
rock-alkaline solution saline water and oil in the existing conditions
of pressure and temperature are considerable.
• Alkaline flooding is usually more efficient if the acid content
relatively high in oil reservoir.
• A new modification to the process is the addition of surfactant and
polymer to the alkali, giving rise to an alkaline-surfactant-polymer
(ASP) EOR method. This method has shown to be an effective, less
costly form of micellar-polymer flooding.
• It was observed also that residual oil saturation always
depends on the dimensionless ratio of viscous to capillary
forces defined as the capillary number: vµ/σ
Where v=velocity
µ=viscosity of the displacing water
σ= interfacial tension between water and oil phases

• When the capillary number value can be increase from 10−6

(conventional waterflood) To 10−4 or more, the residual oil
saturation decreases.

Micelle Structure
Fig-2 Schematic diagram of a micelle
• Hydrophobic tails of the surfactant ions
remain inside the oil because they interact
more strongly with oil than with water.
• The polar "heads" of the surfactant
molecules coating the micelle interact more
strongly with water, so they form
a hydrophilic outer layer that forms a
barrier between micelles.
• This inhibits the oil droplets, the
hydrophobic cores of micelles, from
merging into fewer, larger droplets
("emulsion breaking") of the micelle.
• The compounds that coat a micelle are
typically amphiphilic in nature, meaning
that micelles may be stable either as
droplets of aprotic solvents such as oil in
water, or as protic solvents such as water in
oil.
• When the droplet is aprotic it sometimes is
known as a reverse micelle.
 • Surfactants are usually organic compounds that are
amphiphilic, meaning they contain both both
hydrophobic groups (their tails) and hydrophilic
groups (their heads).

• Therefore, a surfactant contains both a oil-soluble

component and a water-soluble component.

• Surfactants will diffuse in water and adsorb at the

Fig-3 sodium stearate structure interface between oil and water, in the case where
water is mixed with oil.

• The water-insoluble hydrophobic group may extend

out of the bulk water phase, into the oil phase, while
the water-soluble head group remains in the water
phase.
 Fig. 4-Schematic of alkali recovery process.

Alkali/Oil Chemistry Alkali/Rock Chemistry

HAo+NaOH ⇌ NaA+H20 MH+ 𝑁𝑎+ + 𝑂𝐻 − ⇌MNa+H2O,

 MACROSCOPIC RESULTS

• Increasing alkaline concentration, oil

recovery increases.
• This increase is because of increase in
viscosity due to emulsification.
• Alkaline concentration increases, the
concentration of generated in situ
surfactant increases.
• As a result, IFT decreases and more
residual oil releases in a miscible flow.
• However, increase in alkaline
concentration in this range, does not
increase breakthrough time significantly.
Fig-5 : Effect of alkaline different concentration
on oil recovery
 • Injection of three different alkaline
types in a constant concentration of
10000 ppm.

• As it is obvious, change in alkaline

type does not lead to a significant
change in the results.

• It is because of equal pH in these

three various solutions.

Fig-6: Effect of different alkaline with

constant concentration on oil recovery
Screening Criteria
• Crude Oil Gravity 13 – 35 API
• Viscosity < 150 to 200 cp
• Permeability > 250md
• Depth < 9000 ft
• Temp. < 200 ˚F preferred
• Gypsum < 0.1%
• Montmorillonite < 1 percent & 0.4wt %
• Carbon dioxide < 0.01 or PH > 6.5

EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFF. CHEMICALS…

1) Sodium Orthosillicate upto 90-95%
2) Sodium Carbonate upto 65%
3) Sodium Hydroxide upto 80%