A Short Summary of an SPE paper in titled “Investigation

of Wettability Alteration by Low Salinity Water in

Sandstone Rock”

By

Dana Abdulkareem Hasan

MSc.

A Short Summary of an SPE Paper

Department of Natural Resource Engineering and Management

School of Science and Engineering
University of Kurdistan Hewlêr
October 2020
Erbil, Kurdistan
 This paper aimed to alter the wettability of formation by low salinity of water in sandstone
reservoirs to increase the recovery. To study the effect of salinity on contact angle they used
four brines with one deionized water that were conducted at different pressure and Temperature
with two different crude oils in compositions. They measured the contact angles and investigated
zeta potential technique to understand the impact of change of ionic strength. Different cases
investigated under a medium range of Temperature and Pressure beside two different crude oils
in compositions used.

In their experimental work, they found out that for five different experiments under 212F and
1000Psi that the deionized water shows the lowest contact angle while the seawater showed a
higher contact angle (see figure 1).

This result shows that reducing salinity results in wettability alteration.

They also conducted the same experiment under different ranges of temperature to see the
effectiveness of the wettability. They found out that temperature has a great impact on contact
angles. As the temperature increased the surface of mica become less water wet. But it is worthy
to notice that at all the temperature ranges low salinity showed a low contact angle (figure 2).
Pressure has slight effect on wettability as it shown on the experiment results
The results of zeta potential also showed that electrokinetic charge of the interface between oil
and brine is close to zero with more saline water and highly negative with low saline water.

In conclusion:

We understood that salinity has a very great impact on wettability alteration. The lower the
salinity the lower the contact angle and hence more water wet formation will be. Wettability
alteration is also affected by changes in temperature and pressure. The alteration of wettability
by changes of electrokinetic charges governing the overall recovery of oil by injecting LSWF.