THE EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE WETTABILITY ALTERATION OF GLASS MICROMODELS AND THE EFFECT OF WATER ON THE SATURATION OF REMAINING OIL

Nowadays, oil and gas enhanced recovery methods have become highly widespread throughout the world regarding the high value of oil and gas and based on the fact that many reservoirs have entered the second half of their lives. Wettability is among the influential factors in the displacement and entrapment of phases and the recovery coefficient of reservoirs. On the other hand, visual tests are rapidly progressing in experimental investigations of oil and gas engineering. These experiments are usually carried out in the environments made of glass; since the glasses have water wet surfaces, we should push forward its surface from water wet to oil wet so that we can simulate inert and carbonated reservoirs in the best way possible.To this end, the current paper has been written in order to achieve a continuum of wettability between water wet and oil wet. In this study, the effect of a nonionic surfactant sample and an organosilicon has been investigated on the changes in the wettability feature of glass surface using sessile drop method. In 39 conducted experiments, the glass pieces were kept in different concentrations of a solution in a known temperature for several hours so that the surface characteristics change completely. The results demonstrate that, in high weight percentages of the Sillan, the maximum changes in the contact angle has occurred toward oil wet and in the high concentrations of the surfactant in the toluene solution, has occurred toward water wet.In addition, to ensure that the changed wettability of the glass surface is stable, glass micromodels were fabricated and the water flooded enhanced recovery process was carried out on them. Finally, the contact angles were analyzed in the micron scale and the previous results were confirmed with the essential sustainability.

Keywords:

wettability , contact angle , surfactant , polymer , micormodel