Mining Engineering Commons^™

Wettability Alteration Process At Pore-Scale During Engineered Waterflooding Using Computational Fluid Dynamics, Yongqiang Chen, Ping Chang, Guang Xu, Quan Xie

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Engineered waterflooding modifies chemistry of injected brine to efficiently and environmentally friendly enhance oil recovery. The common practice of engineered waterflooding includes low salinity waterflooding (LSW) and carbonated waterflooding. Among these oil recovery methods, wettability alteration has been perceived as a critical physicochemical process for additional oil recovery. While extensive work has been conducted to characterize the wettability alteration, the existing theory cannot explain the conflict oil recovery between secondary mode (injecting engineered water at the very beginning of flooding) and tertiary mode (injecting engineered water after conventional waterflooding), where secondary engineered waterflooding always gives a greater incremental oil recovery …