A laboratory approach to enhance oil recovery factor in a low permeable reservoir by active carbonated water injection

Abstract In this paper, different injectivity scenarios were experimentally investigated in a coreflooding system to observe the efficiency of each method in laboratory conditions. Surfactant flooding, CO2 injection, carbonated water injection (CWI), active carbonated water injection (ACWI), after water flooding were investigated through the coreflooding system. First, it is necessary to optimize the surfactant concentration and then use it in ACWI injection. To do this, linear alkylbenzene sulfonic acid (LABSA) was used as a cationic surfactant at different concentrations. It was observed that 0.6 PV concentration of LABSA had an optimum result as increasing the surfactant concentration would not be significant enough. The increase of active carbonated water has increased oil recovery as it has the maximum oil recovery factor of 64% with the carbonated water of 1 PV that there is more gas transfer to the oil phase. Therefore, surfactant addition would be an applicable chemical agent to reduce the interfacial tension and carbonated water volume required in the injectivity scenarios.