Oil recovery from fractured porous media with/without initial water saturation by using 3-pentanone and its aqueous solution

Abstract This paper presents an application of 3-pentanone, a symmetric dialkyl ketone, to enhance the water imbibition in coreflooding of fractured carbonate cores. 3-Pentanone was tested in two ways: 1.1- wt% 3-pentanone solution in reservoir brine (3pRB) and pure 3-pentanone (3p) as a miscible solvent. It was presented previously that 3p is a mutual solvent for oil and water, and can rapidly change the rock wettability to strongly water-wet with its electron-rich oxygen atom through the oil and water phases. The main objective of this research is to investigate how the initial water saturation (Swi) in the matrix affects the imbibition of 3pRB or 3p from the fracture and the resulting recovery of oil from the matrix. The experimental results were analyzed in terms of material balance (mass and volume) with simplifying assumptions. This analysis enabled to estimate how much of the injected components were imbibed into the surrounding matrices from the fracture and the relative contribution of the injected components to displacing oil in the matrix. Results for the 3pRB and 3p injections indicate collectively that 3-pentanone was more effective in enhancing oil recovery when an aqueous phase was initially present in the matrix.