Mechanistic Modeling of Low Salinity Waterflooding

Cuong T.Q. Dang
Supervisor: Dr. Zhangxing (John) Chen
27

Water flooding is dominant among fluid injection methods. It maintenances pressure after primary depletion, and also can physically displace oil from the reservoirs. Waterflooding has become the most widely adopted IOR technique. However, the recovery factor is relative low with the waterflooding. The low salinity waterflood is good method to improve the performance of waterflooding. This article majorly focused on discussion of the mechanistic modeling of the low salinity waterflood.

LSW is a promising method for enhanced oil recovery. LSW can increases the recovery factor by 5-40% and it can be applied for hostile reservoir conditions. Two important mechanisms of LSW are wettability alteration and fines migration. An ionic exchange model coupling with geochemistry is developed and implemented into compositional simulator. Two reservoir candidates are selected for field scale simulation and optimization of LSW.