Mehraban, Mohammad Fattahi

Project Title

Low Salinity Water Injection

Abstract

Fundamental study of crude oil/brine interactions and their impacts on oil recovery by waterflood Although waterflood has been used extensively for a long time for marinating pressure of oil reservoirs and improving recovery factor, only recently it has been identified that the type and amount of minerals and salts available in the flood water can have a significant impact on the outcome of a waterflood project. Several factors and mechanisms have been proposed as the possible underlying causes of the observed changes in oil recovery by waterflood.

The proposed mechanisms are mainly linked to brine/rock interactions. Very recently, it has been shown that crucial fluid/fluid (brine/oil) interactions also take place during waterflood that can potentially be the dominant factors affecting waterflood recovery factor. These integration are still not fully understood and therefore cannot be properly modelled mathematically. There is therefore a need to investigate fundamental chemical and physical interactions that take place during water flood in an oil reservoir. This knowledge is vital for the development of reliable predictive models and is urgently required as oil companies are increasingly moving toward large-scale field application of new generation of water flood projects often referred to as "designer" or "smart" water flood.

The work requires details characterisation of crude oil samples with different characteristics and physical properties and the study of crude oil/brine interactions and possible new phases and components that may form. A model will then have to be proposed and developed capable of capturing the observed interactions and be included in flow models used for reservoir performance prediction.

Supervisors

Dr Amir Farzaneh and Professor Mehran Sohrabi

Contact

Email: mf68@hw.ac.uk