Tuning the chemistry of seawater with activated clay: an application in SmartWater enrichment for enhanced oil recovery
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Tuning the chemistry of seawater with activated clay: an application in SmartWater enrichment for enhanced oil recovery Jimoh K. Adewole1 · Taye S. Kazeem2 · Tajudeen A. Oyehan3 Received: 9 February 2020 / Accepted: 22 June 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Studies on the interaction between crude oil, brine, and rock systems showed that the composition of water injected into the oil reservoir influences the amount of oil recovered from such a reservoir. Therefore, researchers are now emphasizing the use of SmartWater for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). In this research, the capability of activated clay to be used for tuning the chemistry of seawater for subsequent production of SmartWater was investigated. Filter cakes were formed using bentonite and its blends with raw clay and activated clay (which was produced in-house using locally obtained clay samples). The capability of the cakes to control the transport properties of permeating seawater was evaluated in terms of ion rejection. The average rejection for the raw clay cake for N a+, K+, Mg2+, and C a2+ is 4.45, 49.64, 53.33, and 94.43%, respectively. The rejection results for the mixed-matrix cake containing the activated clay were 6.38, 51.34, 86.19, and 78.09 for Na+, K+, Mg2+, and Ca2+, respectively. It was observed that the selectivity of the filter cake for Mg2+ and Ca2+ was reversed due to the addition of the activated clay. Thus, activated clay possesses some potentials for SmartWater production for an EOR application. Keywords Transport properties · SmartWater · Enhanced oil recovery · Cake filtration · Cation rejection
Introduction Global energy consumption is expected to grow by about 1.2% yearly between the years 2010–2050 (Liu 2015). This value represents an increase of 11.2 billion tons as compared to the energy consumption in 2010. According to the World energy mix (2013), petroleum constitutes 78.4% of the total world energy consumption by source. To cater for the projected increase in energy demand, more wells are expected to be drilled worldwide and advanced oil recovery techniques are also expected to be developed to recover the left-over oil after secondary recovery techniques. Usually, the oil recovery rarely exceeds 35–40% of the original oil-inplace. This is when the best cases are considered. Therefore, * Jimoh K. Adewole [email protected] 1
Membrane Science and Engineering Laboratory, Department of Process Engineering, International Maritime College, Sohar, Sultanate of Oman
2
Department of Chemical Engineering, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
3
Department of Geosciences, King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
there is growing research work on enhanced oil recovery techniques. On a general note, hydrocarbon production stages are classified into three: primary, secondary, and tertiary (otherwise called enhanced oil recovery technique) (Adewole and Sultan 2014). The enhanced oil recovery (EOR
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