Journal of Petroleum & Environmental Biotechnology

Abstract

The Application of Acrylic Acid as Precipitation Inhibitor for ASP Flooding

Khaled Abdalla Elraies and Shuaib Ahmed Kalwar

Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer (ASP) flooding has shown incredible successes for enhancing oil recovery for both sandstone and carbonate reservoirs. However, the main constraint of ASP flooding in carbonate reservoirs is the presence of undesired minerals either within the reservoir rock or reservoir brine. These minerals could react with the added chemicals to form their insoluble salts as precipitations. In this paper, the performance of the acrylic acid was evaluated in the presence of sodium metaborate as an alkaline, alpha olefin sulfonate as a surfactant and AN-125 SH as a polymer. The effect of various acrylic acid concentrations on alkalinity, interfacial tension reduction and polymer viscosity were investigated using hard brine with a total salinity of 59,940 ppm. Fluid-fluid compatibility test indicates that acrylic acid has the potential to prevent any precipitation when hard brine is used. The acrylic acid to alkali ratio of 0.6:1 was found to be the optimum ratio for keeping the solution without precipitations for 30 days at 80oC. It was also observed that the combination of ASP with acrylic acid has a positive effect on interfacial tension and solution viscosity. This makes the new system more flexible for offshore application in which hard brine or sea water could be used to prepare ASP slug without any negative effects.