Technical Session 6:

Title:          Measurement of the IFT between Oil and Water in which CO 2 is dissolved
Authors:     Jumpei Tamai, Yuichi Sugai, Kyuro Sasaki
Abstract:   The high interfacial tension (IFT) between oil and water in the reservoir is one of the main reasons why oil is trapped in the pore space. There are some techniques which enhance oil recovery by reducing the IFT. Surfactant injection is effective for enhancing oil recovery by reducing the IFT. On the other hand, The IFT reduction between oil and water in which CO 2 dissolves hasn’t reported yet so far. The objective of this study is to measure the IFT between oil and water or surfactant solution under high CO 2 pressure condition in order to consider the synergistic effect of the combination of surfactant injection and CO 2 injection on the enhanced oil recovery. First, we constructed an experimental setup which can be used for measuring the IFT under high pressure conditions. The IFT was measured based on the pendant drop method. An oil droplet was made in water phase by injecting oil into a high pressure windowed cell through a capillary tube. A photo image of an oil droplet was analyzed to calculate IFT using the Young-Laplace formula. We measured the IFT between oil and water or sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) solution under high CO 2 pressure conditions. As the result, the IFT between oil and SDS solution was decreased by 70 % under 0.25 MPa of CO 2 condition. This result suggests that CO 2 is effective for IFT reduction and a synergistic effect of the combination of surfactant injection and CO 2 injection can be expected.

Keywords:   Oil, IFT, Contact angle, surfactant, CO2, Young-Laplace, Dissolution.
Pages:        181-184

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