Study of salinity in aqueous medium using x-ray beam with mcnp-x code

In offshore production, it is possible that the produced water presents geochemical characteristics that correspond to the mixture of formation water (connate water) and the sea water (injection water), and the physical-chemical behavior of the injected water allows a considerable variation in the index of salinity altering the water/oil ratio during transportation and/or extraction. Injection water is generally used to raise the reservoir pressure, increasing the percentage of extracted oil. This water has a significant amount of salts that generate some difficulties, such as measuring fractions of volume in multiphase systems. One way to check the effects of salinity would be to regularly measure the amount of salt present in the water. In this way, this work presents a methodology to measure the concentration and the types of salts using nuclear techniques through the MCNP-X computational code. The measurement geometry uses an X-ray beam (40-100 keV) and NaI(Tl) scintillation detector positioned diametrically opposed to the source. The studied samples were the NaCl, KCl and MgCl2 salts in aqueous solution. The results present the possibility of differentiating the formation and injection waters due to differences in the salt concentrations.