Wettability Alteration of Low-permeable Carbonate Reservoir Rocks in Presence of Mixed Ionic Surfactants

Altering the wettability of the carbonate reservoir rocks from oil-wet to water-wet has figured prominently as one of the enhanced oil recovery methods in recent years. The authors measured the effect of different ionic surfactants on the wettability alteration of the rock, saturated with crude oil, and the consequent improvement in oil production was investigated by spontaneous imbibitions of solutions containing cationic, anionic, and cationic-anionic surfactant mixtures. A very low-permeable carbonate rock from one of the Iranian oil reservoirs was selected for this study. The results of imbibition tests were furthermore supported by measuring IFT taking pictures of producing oil drops from different exterior core plug surfaces and also observing the distribution of the remaining oil in cores at the end of experiments. The results show that cationic surfactants at concentrations higher than CMC can cause a remarkable oil production through alteration of wettability and, moreover, the extent of oil production increases with temperature. In contrast, it is observed that the anionic surfactants are not able to change the wettability of an oil-wet surface and their combination with the cationic type would reduce the oil production potential of cationic surfactants.