Petroleum Science > 2016(1 ) :100-109 DOI:
Injection of biosurfactant and chemical surfactant following hot water injection to enhance heavy oil recovery Open Access
文章信息
作者:Hot water injection Biosurfactant Chemical surfactant Enhanced oil recovery
作者单位:Yahya Al-Wahaibi1,Hamoud Al-Hadrami,Saif Al-Bahry,Abdulkadir Elsha?e,Ali Al-Bemani and Sanket JoshiPetroleum and Chemical Engineering Department, Sultan Qaboos University, 112 Muscat, Oman;Petroleum and Chemical Engineering Department, Sultan Qaboos University, 112 Muscat, Oman;Department of Biology, College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University, 112 Muscat, Oman;Department of Biology, College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University, 112 Muscat, Oman;Petroleum and Chemical Engineering Department, Sultan Qaboos University, 112 Muscat, Oman;Department of Biology, College of Science, Sultan Qaboos University, 112 Muscat, Oman
收稿日期:
出版日期:2015-12-10 00:00:00.0
引用方式:
文章摘要
This study investigates the potential of enhancing oil recovery from a Middle East heavy oil ?eld via hot water injection followed by injection of a chemical surfactant and/or a biosurfactant produced by a Bacillus subtilis strain which was isolated from oil-contaminated soil. The results reveal that the biosurfactant and the chemical surfactant reduced the residual oil saturation after a hot water ?ood. Moreover, it was found that the performance of the biosurfactant increased by mixing it with the chemical surfactant. It is expected that the structure of the biosurfactant used in this study was changed when mixed with the chemical surfactant as a probable synergetic effect of biosurfactant-chemical surfactants was observed on enhancing oil recovery, when used as a mixture, rather than alone. This work proved that it is more feasible to inject the biosurfactant as a blend with the chemical surfactant, at the tertiary recovery stage. This might be attributed to the fact that in the secondary mode, improvement of the macroscopic sweep ef?ciency is important, whereas in the tertiary recovery mode, the microscopic sweep ef?ciency matters mainly and it is improved by the biosurfactantchemical surfactant mixture. Also as evidenced by this study, the biosurfactant worked better than the chemical surfactant in reducing the residual heavy oil saturation after a hot water ?ood.
英文关键词
-
Hot water injection Biosurfactant Chemical surfactant Enhanced oil recovery