SPE-193011-MS

Modeling the Effects of Salinity, Polymer Rheology, Temperature, and

Reservoir Wettability on the Performance of In-Depth Gel Treatment Coupled
with Surfactant and Polymer Flooding

Tariq K. Khamees and Ralph E. Flori, Missouri University of Science & Technology; Ahmed A. Alsubaih, Basra Oil
Company; Ali K. Alhuraishawy, Missan Oil Company

Copyright 2018, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference held in Abu Dhabi, UAE, 12-15 November 2018.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
In-depth gel treatment is a chemical EOR process used to improve the sweep efficiency from heterogeneous
reservoirs with crossflow. However, if these reservoirs are saturated with viscous oil, polymer and surfactant
flooding should be combined with in-depth gel treatment. Thus, in this study, a 3D model using the UTGEL
simulator was built to model in-depth gel treatment combined with surfactant slug and polymer solution.
The model was represented by one quarter of the five-spot pattern with eight layers where two thief zones
are located in the middle of the model. The thief zones had a permeability of 1500 md with a total thickness
of 20 ft, while the rest of the layers had a permeability of 100 md with a total thickness of 200 ft.
The gel system consisted of a polyacrylamide/Cr(VI)/thiourea solution, which is considered an in-situ
gelation system. Gelant solution was injected for 60 days when the water cut in the model reached 65%,
followed by surfactant slug for 2 years, polymer solution for 3 years, and then post-water injection for
the rest of the simulation time. The concentrations of the surfactant ranged from 0.01 to 0.2 wt.%, while
the polymer concentration was 1,000 ppm. The injection rate was 1,070 bbl/day during all flooding and
treatment processes.
The results showed that it is imperative to implement surfactant with gel treatment to reduce the interfacial
tension between water and oil phases and to alter the wettability of the reservoir rocks. Thus, gel treatment
alone or gel followed by polymer was not as efficient as the injection of a surfactant slug. The results
also showed that as the reservoir temperature increased, the overall performance of gel, polymer, and
surfactant decreased. Therefore, the higher the temperature, the lower the recovery factor. The results also
revealed the importance of viscoelastic behavior of the HPAM polymer solution where higher results for
both water-wet and oil-wet conditions were obtained compared to shear-thinning behavior only. Moreover,
the results revealed interesting behavior regarding the concentration of the surfactant, where the recovery
factor increased as the concentration of the surfactant increased in oil-wet conditions. However, in water-wet
conditions, the results were unpromising and unfavorable. Furthermore, the injection of surfactant directly
after the gel treatment was more effective in improving the sweep efficiency than the injection of polymer
directly after the gel treatment. Finally, as the salinity of makeup water and/or reservoir brine increased,
2 SPE-193011-MS

the recovery factor decreased for both water and oil-wet systems. This is because, as salinity increased, the
adsorption of both polymer and surfactant increased and the polymer viscosity decreased. Furthermore, the
presence of divalent cations such as Ca+2 and Mg+2, would have a negative impact on overall treatment.

Introduction
The existence of induced fractures due to water flooding and/or natural fractures, in addition to high matrix
permeability that connects the injector with the producer, necessitates the use of different polymer gel
systems to block off these layers. Moreover, the presence of crossflow or direct communication between
these heterogeneous layers could exacerbate the problem. One of these polymer gel systems is the redox
reaction of the in-situ gelation, which consisted of polyacrylamide/Cr(VI)/thiourea. Different types of
reducing agent such as thiourea, sodium bisulfite, and sodium thiosulfate, in addition to the H2S that is
present in injection and reservoir waters, are available to convert the sodium dichromate, which is the source
of Cr(VI) to Cr(III). The purpose of using the reducing agents is to prolong the gelation time; thus, the
gelation process will take place away from the wellbore region to isolate and plug the thief zones and
enhance the volumetric sweep efficiency. In addition, the reducing agents make the viscosity of the gelant
solution to be water-like before the crosslinking between the polymer and the crosslinker. However, thiourea
provides a gelation time longer than the other reducing agents (Bhaskar et al., 1988). Different methods can
be used to produce long gelation time, such as the use of low molecular weight polyacrylamide with a low
degree of hydrolysis in high-temperature reservoirs. This treatment is called in-depth gel treatment, and it
is successful if it is applied to heterogeneous reservoirs with light- to moderate-viscous oil. However, if the
heterogeneous reservoir was saturated with viscous oil and the mobility ratio was high, the treatment would
not be as successful as expected. Thus, another chemical such as polymer or surfactant, either individually
or simultaneously, should be injected either before or after the injection of the gel system. The purpose of
injecting the polymer solution is to increase the viscosity of water and to reduce the mobility ratio, while the
advantage of injecting the surfactant is to reduce residual oil saturation by reducing the interfacial tension
between oil and water and to alter the wettability of the reservoir rocks from oil-wet to mixed or water-wet.
For decades, researchers have investigated the use of the in-situ gels as well as preformed bulk gels,
partially preformed gels, and particle gels as conformance control treatments both in laboratories and in field
projects (Mack and Smith, 1994; Kim, 1995; Sydansk and Southwell, 2000; Coste et al., 2000; Chauveteau
et al., 2001; Pritchett et al., 2003; Chang et al., 2004; Bai et al., 2008; Al-Muntasheri et al., 2009). On the
other hand, the injection of polymer solution has been investigated for more than 50 years (Standnes and
Skjevrak, 2014). Thus, polymer flooding can be considered as a mature EOR method, where 40 projects out
of 46 projects were considered successful in the United States, followed by a successful application in China
with 31 flooding projects in the Daqing oil field (Chang et al., 2006), in addition to Canada and Germany
(Standnes and Skjevrak, 2014). Furthermore, polymer flooding has been used recently for improving oil
recovery in heavy oil reservoirs, particularly in Canada, where oil viscosities range from 430 cp to 80,000
cp (Wang and Dong, 2009; Guo et al., 2013; Rego et al., 2017).
Surfactants or surface-active agents, on the other hand, were used mainly as a well stimulation, a
wettability alteration, and an interfacial tension (IFT) reduction technology (Alvarado and Manrique, 2010;
Sheng, 2015). For example, reducing IFT can release the trapped droplets of oil by breaking up them into
very small droplets causing them to flow easily through the pore throats and eventually improving the sweep
efficiency (Sheng, 2015). Green and Willhite (1998) showed that the reduction in the IFT during surfactant
injection could be three or four orders of magnitude below the IFT encountered during water flood, which
is typically about 30 dynes/cm. The reduction of IFT to ultralow values (i.e., around 0.001 to 0.01 dynes/
cm) is one of the requirements to consider surfactant injection as a successful chemical EOR technology,
where residual oil saturation could be less than 0.05 (Hirasaki et al., 2011). Moreover, surfactant can be
use with Alkaline in a low-permeability reservoir as a stimulation technique to increase well injectivity. For
SPE-193011-MS 3

example, in the Big Sinking field in the Applalchian Basin of East Kentucky, USA, the water injectivity
increased from 41 to 75 barrels per day after the injection of alkali- surfactant solution (Miller et al., 2004).
Different field applications where surfactant injection had been used in the United States such as the Yates
field in Texas and the Cottonwood Creek field in Wyoming, which represents dolomitic naturally fractured
reservoirs (Alvarado and Manrique, 2010; Sheng, 2013). These types of reservoirs were characterized with
a low recovery factor not exceeding 10% of OOIP. The injection of surfactant was promising in the Yates
field, where the well productivity improved due to wettability alteration and due to the reduction in IFT.
However, the results were not encouraging in the Cottonwood Creek field since only 30% of the treated
wells were successful (Sheng, 2013).
In recent years, there has been a trend of combining more than conformance control technologies. The
purpose is to improve both displacement and volumetric sweep efficiencies and to reach the ideal situation
of displacement of oil by water as well as to overcome some of the most difficult problems associated with
oil recovery, such as high oil viscosity, heterogeneity, fractures, and oil-wet conditions as shown in Fig. 1
(Chen, 2016).

Figure 1—Key issues that affect oil recovery factor (Chen, 2016)

Baker et al. (2014) concluded that if the gel treatment was applied before the polymer flooding, additional
oil would be recovered because of the collaborative effect of both technologies. Muhammed (2014) carried
out a novel EOR method coupling preformed particle gel (PPG) conformance treatment and traditional
surfactant flooding to improve overall displacement efficiency from fractured reservoirs. Imqam et al.
(2015) conducted an experimental work to investigate the advantages of combining PPG (conformance
control) with polymer (mobility control) to improve sweep efficiency from non-crossflow heterogeneous
reservoirs. Their results indicated that oil recovery was increased not only from the high- permeability
layers, but also from the low-permeability layers. Meanwhile, Alhuraishawy (2018) coupled PPG treatment
with low-salinity water flooding (LSWF) to enhance oil recovery in fractured reservoirs. Both Muhammed
(2014) and Alhuraishawy (2018) tried to mitigate the problems associated with flooding the fractured
reservoirs by PPG alone. Thus, the idea of coupling conformance control methods such as PPG or polymer
gels is starting to attract researches.
In this study, numerical modeling using the UTGEL simulator was used to show the effect of combining
surfactant slug and polymer solution with in-depth gel treatment. The results were compared with the same
models where only gel or gel-polymer was injected.
4 SPE-193011-MS

Surfactant Classifications
In general, surfactants are composed of a head group and a tail group. The head is hydrophilic (water loving),
while the tail is hydrophopic (water fearing). If the surfactant is injected into the reservoir, it will mix with oil
and water phases and a different phase will form, which is called the microemulsion (ME) (Goudarzi et al.,
2016; Sheng, 2011). Normally, there are three types of microemulsions (Winsor, 1954; Sheng, 2011, 2015):

• Winsor type I microemulsion: Oil dispersed in water (i.e., oil-in-water). In this type, surfactant stays
in the aqueous phase and water is the continuous phase. Thus, it is difficult to achieve ultralow IFT.
• Winsor type II microemulsion: Water dispersed in oil (i.e., water-in-oil). In this type, surfactant is
lost to the oil and observed as surfactant retention; in addition, oil is the continuous phase due to
solubilization of water in residual oil. In this type, oil viscosity increased and should be avoided
in EOR processes.
• Winsor type III microemulsion: Both phases are solubilized in each other; thus, a middle phase is
formed and an ultra-low IFT can be achieved. Sheng (2015) stated that the reduction in residual
oil saturation due to lowering the IFT will depend on how much oil will be solubilized during the
formation of microemulsion. Thus, Winsor type III is recommended in EOR applications.
Moreover, surfactants are classified according to ionic nature of the head group into cationic, nonionic,
anionic, and amphoteric (Sheng, 2011), which has different mechanisms of improving oil recovery. For
example, when cationic surfactants are injected into oil-wet reservoir, these surfactants create ion pairs
with adsorbed organic carboxylates of crude oil, which resulted in the wettability alteration from oil-wet to
mixed-wet or water-wet (Standnes and Austad, 2000). However, this type of surfactant is expensive (Sheng,
2013, 2015). On the other hand, anionic surfactants are available at low cost and have low adsorption in
sandstones but high adsorption in carbonates, which explains the fewer applications in carbonate reservoirs
(Sheng, 2015). Moreover, nonionic surfactants can withstand high salinity; however, it is not as good as
anionic surfactants of reducing the IFT (Sheng, 2011).

Surfactant Mechanisms
As mentioned previously, surfactant will mobilize the hard-to-move oil droplets by lowering the IFT
between water and oil phases and by altering the wettability. Thus, it is crucial to understand the basic
parameters affecting surfactant mechanism such as the relationship between the capillary number and
residual oil saturation (i.e., capillary desaturation curve, CDC). The trapping of non-wetting phase through
a capillary system such as a porous rock depends on the following:

• The pore structure of the porous medium

• Fluid/rock interactions related to wettability

• Fluid/fluid interactions (i.e., IFT)

Capillary Number
Capillary number (Nc) is a dimensionless group and is defined as the ratio of viscous forces (Fv) to capillary
forces (Fc), as shown in Eq. (1):

(1)

where v is the interstitial velocity, μw is the water viscosity, and o is the IFT between water and oil phases.
Different forms of the capillary number have been proposed in the literature (Green and Willhite, 1998;
Abrams, 1975). The capillary number controls the reduction of residual oil saturation because it includes
SPE-193011-MS 5

both viscous forces and capillary forces. The function of the viscous forces is to mobilize oil, while the
capillary forces are responsible for oil trapping (Goudarzi et al., 2016; Lake, 1989). Thus, the mobilization
of the residual oil saturation through increasing the capillary number can be achieved by:

• Increasing the water viscosity to a very high value, which is impractical due to the injectivity
problem
• Increasing the interstitial velocity to a very high value, which is also impractical because the typical
interstitial velocity in field application is 1 ft/day
• Reducing the IFT by injection of surfactant, which represents more realistic and feasible technology

CDC and Wettability

Since CDC is related in one way or another to the distribution of fluids within the pores (Guo et al.,
2017), thus it has a direct relationship with the wettability. Capillary desaturation curve (CDC) represents
the relationship between residual phase saturation versus capillary number (Chukwudeme et al., 2014;
Lake, 1989; Sheng 2011; Green and Willhite, 1998; Guo et al., 2017). Fig. 2 represents a typical CDC for
wetting and non-wetting phase where capillary number should be increase more than the critical wetting and
non-wetting value in order to mobilize the trapped oil and improve microscopic displacement efficiency.
However, if the reservoir wettability is oil-wet, the oil phase will be a wetting phase; thus, higher reduction
in IFT should be achieved to increase the capillary number and mobilize oil droplets.

Figure 2—Typical CDC for wetting and non-wetting phase

Selection of the Proper Simulator

Different reservoir simulators are available to model complex chemical EOR processes; however, each
one has strengths and limitations. For example, in modeling the surfactant injection, the modeling of
microemulsion (ME) viscosity is very essential and vital to capture the accurate behavior of the treatment
(Goudarzi et al., 2016; Delshad, 1994). However, CMG-STARS (Computer Modeling Group) and ECLIPSE
(Schlumberger) simulators are not equipped with an option to model ME phase viscosity; therefore, this
viscosity is considered the same as water viscosity. In addition, the effect of salinity on ME behavior is not
included in these simulators (Goudarzi et al., 2016). Moreover, ECLIPSE and CMG- STARS simulators
are not capable of modeling different types of ME (Sheng, 2015). Thus, CMG-STARS can model only
Winsor type I ME (Goudarzi et al., 2016). However, Computer Modeling Group developed the STARS-
ME simulator (i.e., a newer version of the STARS simulator) that is considered similar to the UTCHEM
simulator (Sheng, 2015; Goudarzi et al., 2016). Other simulators such as Reveal (Petroleum Experts),
6 SPE-193011-MS

and UTCHEM and UTGEL (both developed at The University of Texas at Austin) were fully equipped
with the necessary equations and correlations required to model ME phase behavior. Furthermore, the
UTCHEM simulator has the ability to model phase behavior and wettability alteration, in addition to various
phenomena (for details, see Goudarzi et al., 2016).
In this study, the UTGEL simulator is used to model surfactant behavior, which is considered the best
simulator so far to model wide variety of chemical EOR processes. However, this simulator lack the
necessary post-processing software for visualization of the results. Therefore, different software is used to
display and plot the results, such as S3GRAF (http://www.sciencesoft.com/products/s3graf/) and Kraken 2
(http://www.esss.com.br/kraken/) (Sheng, 2015).

Model Description
The simulation model is a 3D of one quarter of the five-spot pattern, with one injector and one producer.
The model is consisted from six layers, among them two thief zones located in the middle of the model as
represented by the red color in Fig. 3, while the reservoir characteristics are shown in Table 1. Injection and
production wells were perforated through all layers; however, the status of these perforations are different
during the treatment stages. Thus, all layers are open during the injection of fluids, such as pre- and post-
water, surfactant slug, and polymer solution; however, only layers 3 and 4 are open during gelant solution
injection. This is because the penetration of the gelant solution into the low-permeability layers should be
minimized, while the penetration of surfactant slug and polymer solution to the low- permeability layers
should be maximized (Seright et al., 2012).

Figure 3—3D representation of the model showing the high- permeability layers in blue color
SPE-193011-MS 7

Table 1—Reservoir and fluid properties

Other characteristics of the model are as follows:

• The injector and the producer are located at opposite corners

• The injection rate was 1,070 barrels per day

• The thickness of the low-permeability layer is 50 ft with 100 md

• The thickness of the high-permeability layer is 10 ft with 1500 md

• Water and oil viscosities are 0.86 cp and 50 cp, respectively

• The gelant injection was started when the water cut in the model reached 65%

• The comparison of the results with water flooding scenario is not possible because the UTGEL
simulator is not equipped with the necessary equations to model the mechanisms of low-salinity
water flooding. However, the improvement of the recovery factor is due to the effect of salinity on
both polymer viscosity and adsorption. Therefore, two water-flooding runs, one for water-wet and
another for oil-wet, will be used as a basis for comparison, regardless of the salinity of the system.
8 SPE-193011-MS

Injection Schedule
The flooding process was started with water flooding (also called pre-water because it was started prior to
the injection of all chemicals), and then gelant solution was injected for only 60 days followed by 730 days
of surfactant injection. The surfactant injection was followed directly by polymer injection for 1095 days.
Finally, water injection (also called post-water treatment because it occurs immediately after the injection
of all chemicals) was resumed until the end of the simulation time (i.e., 20 years), as shown in Table 2.
Moreover, additional scenarios were modeled where only gelant solution was injected in one scenario, while
gelant solution followed directly by polymer solution was injected in another scenario, as shown in Tables 3
and 4. The purpose was to compare the results obtained from these runs with the injection schedule shown
in Table 2.

Table 2—Injection schedule for in-depth gel treatment followed by surfactant slug and polymer solution

Table 3—Injection schedule for in-depth gel treatment only

Table 4—Injection schedule for in-depth gel treatment followed by polymer solution
SPE-193011-MS 9

Polyemr Gel System

In this study, the in-situ gelation system was consisted of partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM)
polymer solution, reducing agent (thiourea), and sodium dichromate as a source of Cr(VI). The early works
regarding this gel system were introduced by Clampitt and Hessert (1974) and Hessert and Fleming (1979).
The gel is formed in-situ by injecting two slugs of polymers, the first slug containing Cr(VI) and the second
slug containing the reducing agent. When these two slugs meet inside the reservoir, Cr(VI) will reduce to
Cr(III) by the redox reaction, where it will crosslink slowly with the polymer solution. Eqs. (2) and (3)
illustrate the kinetics reaction:
(2)
(3)
Different types of in-situ gelation system are available; however, the selection of the optimum system will
depend on reservoir conditions such as salinity and hardness of the reservoir brine, temperature, and degree
of heterogeneity, in addition to the availability and cost. Strengths and limitations of using this gel system
have been listed in our previous study (Khamees and Flori, 2018a). Furthermore, the detailed equations
regarding gel viscosity, gel adsorption, and permeability reduction were also presented. Table 5 shows the
polymer gel input parameters, Table 6 shows the gel kinetics parameters and Table 7 shows the gel reaction
constant at different reservoir temperatures.

Table 5—Polymer gel input parameters (Kim, 1995; Khamees and Flori, 2018a)

Table 6—Gel kinetics parameters (Shen et al., 2014)

Table 7—Gel reaction constant at different temperatures (Shen et al., 2014)

10 SPE-193011-MS

Dependence of Polymer Viscosity on Polymer Concentration and Brine Salinity.

It is well known that as polymer concentration increases, the polymer viscosity increases, regardless of the
type of the polymer solution. However, different polymer solutions have different polymer rheology when
flowing inside porous media. For example, HPAM polymer solution exhibits shear-thinning and shear-
thickening behavior, while xanthan biopolymer exhibits only shear-thinning behavior as shown in Fig. 4.

Figure 4—Polymer viscosity as a function of shear rate for shear thinning and UVM (Sheng 2011; Khamees and Flori, 2018a)

In UTGEL simulator, the polymer rheology is modeled using the unified viscosity model (UVM), which
was proposed by Delshad et al. (2008). Detailed descriptions of the equations of the UVM and shear thinning
models were presented in our previous study (Khamees and Flori, 2008a). The relationship between polymer
viscosity and polymer concentration at different salinity levels is presented in Fig. 5, while the relationship
between polymer adsorption and polymer concentration at different salinity levels is presented in Fig. 6.
Moreover, the procedures for obtaining the shear thinning parameters (Ap1,Ap2,Ap3) in Eq. (4), exponent
Sp, and Langmuir isotherm parameters (Eq. 5) were also mentioned in our previous study in detail. Table
8 shows the shear thinning parameters, while Table 9 and Fig. 7 shows the exponent Sp. Finally, Table 10
shows Langmuir isotherm parameters and Table 11 shows the polymer input parameters.

Figure 5—HPAM apparent viscosity as a function of polymer

concentration and salinity (Aluhwal 2008; Khamees and Flori, 2018a)
SPE-193011-MS 11

Figure 6—HPAM adsorption as a function of polymer concentration and salinity (Aluhwal 2008; Khamees and Flori, 2018a)

Figure 7—Specific viscosity versus salinity at 1000-ppm HPAM concentration

to obtain Sp exponent for Flory-Huggins equation (Khamees and Flori, 2018a)

Table 8—Shear thinning parameters of Flory-Huggins equation (Khamees and Flori, 2018a)

Table 9—Sp exponent at different polymer concentration (Khamees and Flori, 2018a)
12 SPE-193011-MS

Table 10—Langmuir isotherm parameters

Table 11—Polymer input parameters (Yuan 2012; Khamees and Flori, 2018a)

(4)

(5)

Relative Permeability and Capillary Pressure.

Corey relative permeability models are used to calculate oil and water relative permeability curves based
on the endpoint relative permeability for each phase and the Corey exponent as shown in Eqs. (6) and (7)
using the relative permeability parameters shown in Table 12:

Table 12—Relative permeability parameters (Shen et al., 2013)

(6)

(7)
SPE-193011-MS 13

On the other hand, capillary pressure in the UTGEL simulator is calculated using Eq. (8) and the capillary
pressure parameters shown in Table 13:

Table 13—Capillary pressure parameters (Shen et al., 2013)

(8)

Surfactant Phase Behavior and Interfacial Tension

Phase behavior parameters of surfactant are not easy to obtain, and thus a trial-and-error simulation run is
used to memic the experimental data of solubilization ratio, which are used in this study (AlSofi et al., 2013).
Huh (1979) suggested a correlation to calculate oil-water-microemulsion interfacial tension; however, his
correlation has been modified to include the solubilization ratio (PGE, 2007; AlSofi et al., 2013) as shown
in Eq. (9), while Table 14 shows these parameters:

Table 14—Surfactant and chemical-rock interactions (AlSofi et al., 2013)

(9)

Results and Discussion

Importance of Coupling Surfactant-Polymer with In-Depth Gel Treatment.
As mentioned previously, if the heterogeneous reservoir was saturated with viscous oil, it would exacerbate
the situation and would yield low sweep efficiency. Therefore, it is imperative to include additional chemical
EOR processes to boost the recovery. Three models including gel treatment alone, gel treatment followed
by polymer flooding, and gel treatment with both surfactant and polymer flooding were run. The effects
of the wettability conditions of the reservoir and UVM polymer rheology were included in these models.
14 SPE-193011-MS

Moreover, the temperature of the reservoir was 140 °F, while the concentration of the surfactant was 0.2
wt.%.
The results clearly demonstrate the importance of using both surfactant slug and polymer solution
directly after gel treatment. Table 15 shows the recovery factor obtained from these runs, and the following
conclusions can be drawn from this table:

Table 15—Comparison of recovery factor

• Regardless of the wettability conditions of the model, as salinity increased, the recovery decreased
because the salinity affected both polymer viscosity and polymer adsorption, in addition to the
effect of salinity on the solubility of surfactant.
• Regardless of the wettability of the model, coupled surfactant-polymer with in-depth gel treatment
would result in higher recovery factor compared to other scenarios (i.e., gel alone and gel with
polymer).
• Regardless of the salinity of the system, water-wet conditions always yielded higher results
compared to counterpart oil-wet conditions because oil relative permeability is always higher in
water-wet system than in oil-wet system.
• Due to the interaction of surfactant slug with polymer solution, the overall sweep efficiencies will
improve. Fig. 8 shows that water viscosity increased from 0.86 cp (initial value) to maximum value
of 15 cp (when polymer was used with gel) to maximum value of 40 cp (when both surfactant slug
and polymer solution were injected after gel treatment).

Figure 8—Comparison of water viscosity in layer 2 at 10,000 ppm salinity for water-wet system between gel treatment
alone (left), gel treatment followed by polymer (middle), and gel treatment followed by surfactant and polymer(right)
SPE-193011-MS 15

Effect of Reservoir Temperature.

One of the essential requirements of the success or failure of any chemical EOR processes is long-
term stability. This stability depends on the resistance of these chemicals to reservoir conditions such as
temperature, salinity, and hardness of the brine (Hirasaki et al., 2011), in addition to the adsorption on
reservoir rocks. In this section, a UVM polymer rheology and low surfactant concentration (i.e., 0.01 wt.
%) were used, and brine salinity was 10,000 ppm. The effect of temperature of the reservoir on overall
treatment is presented in Table 16. The results showed that the higher the reservoir temperature, the lower
the recovery factor, regardless of the wettability of the system. This behavior is attributed to the following:

• As temperature increased, the activation energy increased and the gel reaction constant increased;
hence, the gelation process occurred faster and the gelation time dramatically decreases (Jordan
et al., 1982; Kim, 1995).
• Below the threshold temperature, the gelation process could not happen and the crosslinking with
the crosslinker could not occur (Kim, 1995).
• The propagation and the penetration of gel and the residual resistance factor decreased as
temperature increased as shown in Fig. 9.
• When temperature increased, the viscosity of HPAM polymer solution decreased because of
thermal degradation. Niu et al. (2001) stated that for reservoirs with high temperature (higher than
140 °F), the viscosity of HPAM would be very low, which affect the strength of the formed gel.
• As temperature increased, the hydrolysis of HPAM polymer solution increased and the viscosity
increased; however, the chemical stability decreased due to the loss of amide groups (CONH2)
(Sheng, 2011).
• The surfactant retention is composed of surfactant adsorption and phase trapping, which both
increased as temperature increased. Phase trapping is more important than surfactant adsorption
(Hirasaki et al., 2011). Thus, surfactant solution will be depleted faster as the temperature increases,
which affect the post-water treatment. Fig. 10 shows a comparison of water distribution after the
treatment in layer 2 between 120 °F and 180 °F models.

Table 16—Comparison of recovery factor

16 SPE-193011-MS

Figure 9—Comparison of residual resistance factor in layer 4 at 10,000 ppm salinity

for water-wet system between reservoir temperatures 120 °F (left), and 180 °F (right)

Figure 10—Comparison of water saturation in layer 2 at 10,000 ppm salinity for

water-wet system between reservoir temperatures 120 °F (left), and 180 °F (right)

Effect of Polymer Rheology on Gel-Polymer and Gel-Surfactant-Polymer Models.

HPAM polymer solution is commonly used in field applications of chemical EOR processes. This polymer
solution exhibits both shear-thinning behavior where viscosity decreases as shear rate increases and shear-
thickening behavior beyond critical shear rate or flow velocity (Delshad et al., 2008). The development
of shear-thickening behavior depends on many factors such as the pore structure, the flow velocity, and
the molecular weight of the polymer solution. The ability of the polymer molecules to stretch and recoil
during its flow through pores will determine the onset of the shear-thickening behavior, which is not only
yielded high polymer viscosity, but also enhanced the displacement efficiency (Wang et al., 2001; Huh and
Pope, 2008). Clarke et al. (2016) and Urbissinova et al. (2010) have found that the viscoelastic properties of
HPAM could reduce the residual oil saturation. Moreover, the prevalence of the shear-thickening behavior
of HPAM is associated with molecular weight higher than 20 million Dalton (Delshad et al., 2008; Kim et
al., 2010; Li and Delshad, 2014).
In this section, two models were run. In the first model, polymer rheology follows shear-thinning behavior
only, while in the second model, the polymer rheology follows both shear-thinning and shearthickening
SPE-193011-MS 17

behavior using the unified viscosity model. Fig. 11 shows the UVM (black curve) and shearthinning
behavior (red curve) for HPAM polymer solution at 10,000-ppm salinity.

Figure 11—UVM and shear thinning polymer viscosity at 10,000 ppm (1%) NaCl salinity (Khamees and Flori, 2018b)

These runs were modeled at 120 °F reservoir temperature with 0.01 wt.% surfactant concentration. The
results were shown in Tables 17 and 18 for water-wet and oil-wet systems, respectively. The results clearly
demonstrated that the higher recovery factors are always associated with runs using the UVM model,
regardless of the wettability of the system because the shear-thickening behavior would assist the diversion
of post-water treatment into the low-permeability layers (Clarke et al., 2016). In addition, the higher the
salinity of the system, the lower the recovery factor; as salinity increased, the curling of the polymer
molecules increased and the viscosity decreased, while at low salinity, the polymer molecules stretched and
the viscosity increased. Moreover, the injection of surfactant immediately after the gel treatment followed
by polymer improved the recovery more than the injection of polymer solution alone after the gel treatment.
Therefore, the effectiveness of in-depth gel treatment is higher with the UVM model than with the shear-
thinning model, as shown in Fig. 12.

Figure 12—Comparison of residual resistance factor in layer 4 at 10,000 ppm

salinity for water-wet system between shear-thinning model (left), UVM model (right)
18 SPE-193011-MS

Table 17—Comparison of recovery factor for water-wet system

Table 18—Comparison of recovery factor for oil-wet system

Moreover, the effect of wetting characteristics of the system is clearly demonstrated in Fig. 13, where
layer 2 (low-permeability layer) was damaged due to the gel treatment in an oil-wet system compared to a
water-wet system. In an oil-wet system, the larger pores are normally saturated with water, which permits
the gelant solution to disperse and damage the low-permeability layers. The latter findings had already been
confirmed in our previous work (Khamees and Flori, 2018a).

Figure 13—Comparison of residual resistance factor in layer 2 at 10,000

ppm salinity for oil-wet system (left) and water-wet system (right)

Effect of Surfactant Concentration

In formulation of the microemulsions, the concentration of the surfactant plays an important role. In field
applications, the surfactant is normaly injected at very low concentration, thus type III microemulsion may
not form (Sheng, 2015). Babadagli et al. (2002) performed a laboratory study to test the feasibility of
injecting a dilute surfactant slug in the Yibal field, Oman. The study was carried out using different surfactant
SPE-193011-MS 19

types and concentrations, where the higher concentration yielded lower IFT, while lower concentration
yielded higher IFT. However, increasing the concentration did not always yield higher results. For example,
surfactant type (T1) with two different concentrations (0.5% and 0.1%) yielded controversial results. The
higher concentration (0.5%) yielded lower recovery factor (4.94% OOIP), while the lower concentration
(0.1%) yielded higher recovery factor (6.59% OOIP). Therefore, higher recoveries should not necessarily be
expected with higher concentrations. The results obtained in our study (Table 19) agreed with the findings
of Babadagli et al. (2002) for the water-wet system; however, for the oil-wet system, the results showed that
as surfactant concentration increased, the recovery factor increased because of the reduction of IFT and the
alteration of wettability. Moreover, the adsorption of surfactant increased as the concentration increased.
Thus, in the case of water-wet system, the recovery decreased as the concentration increased because the
adsorbed amount increased and because of the minor effect of surfactant on the wetting conditions of the
rocks, which is already water-wet. In the oil-wet conditions, the dual effects of IFT reduction and wettability
alteration would improve sweep efficiency and increase the recovery factor. Fig. 14 shows that increasing
the surfactant concentration from 0.01 to 0.2 wt.% would result in less damage to layer 2 in the oil-wet
system. In this section, the salinity was 10,000 ppm and the temperature of the reservoir was 140 °F.

Figure 14—Comparison of residual resistance factor in layer 2 between 0.01 wt.% (left) and 0.2 wt.% conc. (right)

Table 19—Comparison of recovery factor at different surfactant concentrations for water and oil-wet systems

Effect of the injection Scheme

Injection scheme is defined as the order of injecting the chemicals. In all scenarios, the treatment was started
by gelant injection because the high-permeability layers should be plugged before applying other chemicals
such as surfactant and/or polymer (Baker et al., 2014, Seright et al., 2002; Dong et al., 2008). Therefore,
20 SPE-193011-MS

an alternative injection scheme was proposed where polymer preceded the surfactant slug. The purpose of
this section is to investigate which injection scheme can enhance the sweep efficiency and produce more
oil from the reservoir. These models were run with 10,000 ppm salinity and 120 °F reservoir temperature,
while the surfactant concentration was 0.1 wt.%. The combination injection of gel then polymer or polymer
then gel has been investigated in previous studies (Gao and Burchfield, 1995; Khamees and Flori, 2018a);
however, different results have been concluded. It was expected that the injection of polymer directly after
the gel treatment would result in higher recovery because the unreacted crosslinkers would react with the
injected polymer as suggested by Gao and Burchfield (1995). However, in this study, the injection of the
surfactant slug directly after gel treatment and before polymer solution was the best scenario for both water-
and oil-wet conditions, as shown in Table 20. The recovery factor curves for an oil-wet system is shown
in Fig. 15, where GSP run refers to gel-surfactant-polymer and GPS run refers to gel-polymer-surfactant,
while OW refers to oil-wet system.

Figure 15—Comparison of recovery factor between waterflooding, GSP and GPS injection scheme for oil-wet system

Table 20—Comparison of recovery factor using different injection schemes

Effect of Salinity and Hardness

The results obtained in the previous sections reveal that increasing the salinity of the makeup water or the
salinity of the reservoir brine lowered the recovery factor for both water- and oil-wet conditions. At high
salinity, the polymer viscosity decreased and the polymer adsorption increased. The negative charges of the
carboxyl group (COO-) will attach to the positive sides of the cations in the salt, which causes shrinkage.
On the other hand, at low salinity, these groups repel each other and stretch, which increases the polymer
viscosity (Sheng, 2011).
The salinity affects the solubility of the surfactant, and thus as salinity increases, the solubility decreases
and the efficiency of surfactant decreases because there is an optimal salinity where the solubilization
ratios of oil and water are equal (Lake, 1989; Sheng, 2011; AlSofi et al., 2013). Disturbing this ratio will
tremendously affect the microemulsion viscosity. Whereas, the relationship between the salinity and the
SPE-193011-MS 21

surfactant adsorption is reversible (Sheng, 2011). Thus, lowering the salinity will reduce the adsorbed
surfactant, which will improve the recovery further by embodiment of polymer solution in the surfactant
slug (Hirasaki et al., 2011). Babadagli et al. (2002) stated that the increasing the adsorption of surfactant
might result in increasing the wetting conditions of the carbonate rocks (i.e., oil-wet will be more oil-wet
and water-wet will be more water-wet).
In this section, the salinity of post-water treatment was increased in one model and decreased in another.
The purpose was to investigate the effect of increasing and decreasing the salinity on the performance of
the treatment. In the first model, two initial salinities were considered (i.e., 2000 and 5000 ppm), while the
salinity of post-water was increased to 15,000 ppm. In the second model, two initial salinities were used (i.e.,
15,000 and 20,000 ppm), while the salinity of post-water was lowered to 2,000 ppm. These models were
run using 0.2 wt.% surfactant concentration and 140 °F reservoir temperature. Tables 21 and 22 show the
results of these runs, which show that increasing the salinity of post-water lowers the recovery factor, while
lowering the salinity of post-water improves the recovery for both water- and oil-wet systems. Furthermore,
lowering the salinity of post-water would improve the blocking efficiency of the gel treatment as shown
in Fig. 16, which shows that gel penetrated deeper into a high-permeability layer when low-salinity chase
water was injected.

Figure 16—Comparison of gel penetration in layer 4 between run with no change in salinity
(left) and run with low salinity post-water (right) for a model with 15,000 ppm initial salinity

Table 21—Effect of high salinity post-water injection on the recovery factor

Table 22—Effect of low salinity post-water injection on the recovery factor

22 SPE-193011-MS

The effect of the presence of divalent cations (e.g., Ca2+ and Mg2+), especially in sandstone reservoirs,
has been investigated by many researchers such as Hill et al. (1977), Pope et al. (1978), Hirasaki (1982),
Glover et al. (1979), Gupta (1982), and Sheng (2015). They found that the presence of these divalent cations
increases the retention of the surfactant because of the cation exchange with surfactant micelles. Moreover,
these divalent cations have a higher effect than monovalent cations (e.g., Na+ and K+) on the chemical
degradation of HPAM polymer solution because the negative carboxyl groups interact strongly with these
cations (Sheng, 2011). Two salinity values (i.e., 2000 and 5000 ppm) were selected to run the models with
and without cations. The cation concentration was 2000 ppm, while the surfactant concentration was 0.1
wt.% and the reservoir temperature was 140 °F. The results shown in Table 23 clearly demonstrate the
impact of cations on the recovery factor. Fig. 17 represents the results for the model with 2000 ppm without
and with divalent cations. The distribution of water saturation in layer 2 was more efficient without the
presence of cations compared to presence of cations. Therefore, the propagation of the gelant solution and
the performance of both surfactant and polymer solutions were more effective without the presence of the
divalent cations.

Figure 17—Comparison of water saturation after the treatment in layer 2 between run
without cations (left) and run with cations (right) for a model with 5,000 ppm initial salinity

Table 23—Effect of cations on the recovery factor

Conclusions
1. Improving the sweep efficiency form heterogeneous reservoir saturated with viscous oil requires
combining more than chemical EOR processes.
2. Increasing reservoir temperature affects gelation processes, thermal stability of HPAM polymer
solution, and surfactant retention, which lower the overall sweep efficiencies.
3. The viscoelastic properties of the HPAM yielded higher recovery factor and assisted the diversion of
post-water injection into the low-permeability layers, thus improving the sweep efficiency.
SPE-193011-MS 23

4. Performing the treatments in a water-wet reservoir was more efficient and had less damage to the low-
permeability layers compared to an oil-wet system.
5. As the surfactant concentration increased, the recovery factor was increased from oil-wet models.
However, for water-wet models, the recovery decreased as the concentration increased.
6. Injection of surfactant directly after the gel treatment was more efficient than the injection of HPAM
polymer solution directly after the gel treatment.
7. As the salinity of the makeup water and/or the reservoir brine increased, the adsorption of the HPAM
increased and the viscosity decreased, which affects the strength of the formed gel.
8. As the salinity increased, the solubility and the efficiency of surfactant decreased because the
solubilization ratio of oil decreased, which lowers the viscosity of the microemulsion.
9. The presence of divalent cations such as Ca2+ and Mg2+ will affect the penetration and propagation of
gel into the high-permeability layers. In addition, the carboxyl groups in the HPAM polymer solution
will interact strongly with these cations. Moreover, the presence of these divalent cations increases
the retention of the surfactant.

Acknowledgments
The financial support from the Ministry of Oil of Iraq and the ExxonMobile Iraq Training Technology &
Scholars Program (ExxonMobile Iraq) are highly acknowledged.

Nomenclatures
Nc = Capillary number, dimensionless
Fv = Viscous forces
Fc = Capillary forces
v= Interstitial velocity, m/S
μw = Water viscosity, mPa. S
σow = Interfacial tension between water and oil phases, dyne/cm
μapp = Apparent viscosity of the polymer solution, cp
= Polymer viscosity at very low (approximately zero) shear rate; function of polymer
concentration & effective salinity, cp
AP1, AP2, AP3 Shear thinning viscosity model parameters, (wt%)-1, (wt%)-2, (wt%)-3
=
Cp = Polymer concentration in water phase, wt%
Sp = Slope of specific viscosity vs. salinity plot, dimensionless
CSEP = Effective salinity, meg/ml
βp = Input parameter measured in the laboratory, dimensionless
n1 = Shear-thinning viscosity model parameters, dimensionless
λ1 = Polymer relaxation time
β1, β2 = Shear-thinning viscosity model parameters, sec, (wt%)-1
λ2 = Shear-thickening viscosity model parameter, sec
n2 = Shear-thickening viscosity model parameter, dimensionless
τr = Rotational relaxation time
τo, τ1 = Shear-thickening viscosity model parameters, (wt%)-1
AP11, AP22 = Shear-thickening viscosity model parameters, dimensionless, (wt%)-1
= Adsorbed polymer concentration, wt%
b= Polymer adsorption parameter,
24 SPE-193011-MS

a1 = Polymer adsorption parameter, dimensionless

a2 = Polymer adsorption parameter, ml/meg
a/b = Maximum level of adsorbed polymer
krw = Water relative permeability, dimensionless
kro = Oil relative permeability, dimensionless
= Water relative permeability at endpoint saturation, dimensionless
= Oil relative permeability at endpoint saturation, dimensionless
Sw = Water saturation, fraction
Swi = Irreducible water saturation, fraction
So = Oil saturation, fraction
Sor = Residual oil saturation, fraction
nw, no = Corey exponents for water and oil phases, respectively
Cpc = Endpoint capillary pressure, dimensionless
Epc = Exponent for capillary pressure, dimensionless
σom = Interfacial tension between oil and microemulasion, dyne/cm
Ro = Oil solubilization ratio
a, c = Empirical constants
F= Correction factor

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