Wettability is a tendency of the liquid to spread on a solid surface. In enhanced oil recovery wettability plays an important role as that determines the interactions between the solid (rock) and the liquids in the reservoirs (crude oil, brine). Wettability has been recognized as one of the key parameters controlling the remaining oil-in-place.
Rocks can be classified as water-wet, mixed-wet or oil-wet.
When the rock is water-wet, water is preferentially in contact with the mineral when oil is the surrounding phase. The rock is said to be oil-wet when oil is the liquid in contact. The state in between is called intermediate- or mixed-wet. Contact angles are used as a measure of wettability and thus contact angle ranges for different wetting states can be defined.
Wettability alteration is an effective approach to enhanced oil recovery. The purpose of the wettability alteration is to change the wetting state of the rock to be more water-wet. Several factors, including crude oil, brine, and rock composition as well as pressure and temperature affect the wettability.
Different approaches have been taken to adjust the wettability of the reservoirs. For carbonate reservoir that is oil-wet, the main methods include CO2 injections and chemical flooding with polymers. Alternative methods are constantly developed due to the increasing importance of the carbonate reservoirs as our source of oil in the future.
If you would like to read more about wettability alteration in carbonate reservoir, please download the overview below.
Susanna is an Application Scientist at Biolin Scientific. In her PhD thesis, she developed fabrication methods for a new type of inorganic-organic polymers. Microfabricated polymer chips were utilized as tool for biomolecule separation in analytical chemistry.
