DESIGN AND FABRICATION OF MICROFLUIDIC TEST KIT TO ANALYZE OIL RECOVERY FACTOR FROM LOW SALINITY WATERFLOODING EOR IN OILFIELD

• Main Author: Muhammad Faisal, Rhesa
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Teknik kimia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/59281
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) has long been the subject of research to overcome the decline in oil production. Low salinity waterflooding is one of the EOR injection methods which used pretreated water formation that had low salinity and this characteristic could increase the injection sweep efficiency. Low salinity waterflooding improves sweep efficiency in the micro-scale pores by modifying the wettability of the rock hence increases the recovery factor. From study references, low salinity waterflooding can increase recovery factor from 3% up to 90%. A laboratory scale analysis is indispensable to determine the recovery factor of EOR injection. Microfluidic micromodel EOR analysis is an emerging laboratory analysis which observes injection process using a transparent 2-D model of rock porous. By using this method, visualization of fluid flow in the micro-scale pore can be generated and further analysis of the oil recovery mechanism from EOR applications could be obtained. In this thesis, a microfluidic test kit with flowrate capacity 0.01 – 100 ?L/min and pressure 0 – 50 psig was designed and fabricated to test 7 series of various salinity injections and compare the recovery factor (RF) subsequently. Homogeneous rock patterns with PMMA material were used in designing microfluidic chip with porosity of 27.8% and permeability of 2.8 Darcy. The crude oil has an °API of 31.9, while the formation water has a pH of 7.5 and 10,958 ppm in salinity. The injection solutions were NaCl and CaCl2 with salinity of 600, 6,000 and 11,000 ppm. Experiments were carried out at 80 – 84°C and atmospheric pressure. The injection was then recorded using a microscope camera and processed by a program in Python language afterwards to obtain saturation data and recovery factor. Formation water injection produces an RF of 13%. An increase in RF was observed in the NaCl and CaCl2 injections with lower salinity than formation water. The highest RF up to 33 % was generated from 6,000 ppm of CaCl2 injection.