Experimental Study on Forced Imbibition and Wettability Alteration of Active Carbonated Water in Low-Permeability Sandstone Reservoir

Abstract

Imbibition is one of the main mechanisms for fluid transport in porous media. A combination of carbonated water and active water [active-carbonated water (ACW)] has great prospects in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and carbon reduction processes. To date, the law of hydrocarbon recovery induced by ACW imbibition is not clear. In this paper, the optimal surfactant concentration was first selected through a spontaneous imbibition experiment, and on this basis, CO2 was dissolved to form ACW. The imbibition effects of formation water (FW), surfactant solution DX-1, and ACW under different pressures were compared. The changes in rock wettability in the three imbibition solutions during imbibition were studied by measuring the contact angle. The effect of fracture on ACW imbibition was studied. Finally, the improved NB−1 was calculated to elucidate the mechanism of forced imbibition for EOR. The results show that 0.1% DX-1 produces the optimal imbibition effect. Pressure is positively correlated with imbibition recovery. ACW can significantly improve the imbibition effect due to its wettability reversal ability being better than those of FW and DX-1. CO2 in ACW can be trapped in the formation through diffusion into small rock pores. The contact angles of the three imbibition solutions decrease with increasing pressure. The contact angle between the rock and oil droplet in the ACW is as low as 38.13°. In addition, the fracture increases the contact area between the matrix and the fluid, thereby improving the imbibition effect. The alteration of NB−1 indicates that FW imbibition is gravity-driven cocurrent imbibition. DX-1 and ACW imbibitions are countercurrent imbibitions driven by capillary force and gravity. The above results demonstrate the feasibility of ACW in low-permeability reservoir development and carbon reduction.