Abstract—Low salinity water flooding is a very promising EOR method in recent years in which chemistry play major role in improving oil recovery. Several studies shown that oil recovery significantly increase by low salinity water flooding (LSWF) in sandstone. However, the mechanisms of oil recovery improvement are still controversial, its considered to be decrease of residual oil saturation and alteration of rock wettability, the solution and surface chemistry as well as rock/fluid interactions have important roles that can be attributed to reservoir minerals being sensitive to small changes in solution properties. This paper provides a comprehensive review of low salinity water flooding. Attempt is made to cover all aspects and features of low salinity water flooding to shed light on critical and challengeable features and clear the gaps and deficiencies of conducted studies. The proposed mechanisms are discussed and their success and failure are explained. Analytical and numerical modeling of low salinity water flooding is presented. Secondary and tertiary low salinity water flooding are compared in the term of additional oil recovered. Surfaces forces and rock/fluid/brine interaction and its relationship to wettability are discussed. Results of combined low salinity and EOR methods are described which includes simultaneous use of low salinity with polymer flooding, surfactant flooding. Accordingly, low salinity water flooding EOR methods have great potential for enhanced oil recovery in the future.
Index Terms—Low salinity water flooding, oil recovery, secondary recovery, tertiary recovery.
Adam Abdalla, Renyuan Sun, and Tang Guiyun are with School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum, China (e-mail: Adamabdalla2015@gmail.com, sunrenyuan@126.com).
Aixian Huang is with Dongxin Oil Production Plant, Shengli Oilfield Company, SINOPEC, Dongying, Shandong, China.
Meijie Wang is with Research Institute of Engineering &Technology, Xinjiang Oilfield Company, CNPC, kelamayi, Xinjiang, China.
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Cite: Adam Abdalla, Renyuan Sun, Tang Guiyun, Aixian Huang, and Meijie Wang, "Low Salinity as New Technique of Enhanced Oil Recovery," International Journal of Chemical Engineering and Applications vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 117-121, 2017.
