Reservoir solids

As pointed out before, these compounds will react among each other and also with water vapour at terrestrial rather than Titaiuan T levels, affording a variety of products which in turn depend on the applied catalyst. When the eventual product can extract the catalytic metal ions for this very reaction from some reservoir (solid or dissolved), the system (a) gets autocatalytic and (b) the corresponding product is selected against the others formation of which is promoted by catalysts which cannot or hardly be sequestered by their own products. So the relationship between formation and... 

Figure 11. Relation of oil reservoirs (solid patterns) in Pennsylvanian Tensleep Sandstone to carbonaceous shale beds of the Permian Phosphoria Formation and to inferred maximum depth of burial (thickness of Mesozoic rocks, in kilometers) shown by solid lines and supplementary 2.5- and 3,5-km thickness shown by dashed line.

Surfactant Chemical Stability. Two approaches were used in assessing surfactant degradation over time. The first consisted of monitoring the pH of surfactant solutions that were in contact with pieces of reservoir rock over several months. Because only commercially available surfactants were tested and almost all of them contained secondary components, the pH data were rather inconclusive. The fact that reservoir solids have some buffering capacity made the interpretation of pH trends even more difficult. 

Table V. Isoelectric Points of Some Reservoir Solids...

Reservoir solids may be produced during exploitation of petroleum reservoirs. Solids management practices depend on the nature of the reservoir and the produced fluids. For conventional oil and gas reservoirs, operators normally have focused on prevention or control of solids influx into production wells. In Canada, exploitation of heavy oil reservoirs has been found to be more effective when solids are produced. 

Many reservoirs are now being exploited by horizontal wells, which have long horizontal contact with the reservoir. Solids control methods for horizontal wells have been adapted from those used in vertical wells. Special techniques and equipment have been developed to remove deposited solids from horizontal wells. 

The reservoir solids are most conveniently classified according to their size. Because the particles are of irregular shape, classification is on the basis of sieve opening of sieve screens. Sieve opening is the width of the minimum square aperture through which the particle can... 

Prediction of Solids Production. In the development of conventional oil and gas reservoirs, solids management strategies are used to avoid solids production by proper production practices or to control or prevent solids production, if it is unavoidable. The use of solids control methods is usually based on experience with analogous offset wells in the area where a new well is to be drilled. Offset well data can be used effectively if the geological and reservoir characteristics and the well drilling, completion, and production procedures are similar. It is often difficult or expensive to recomplete wells if a solids production problem occurs after initial completion of the well. In some cases, productivity may be negatively impacted if solids control is retroactively installed in... 

Efficient exploitation of some Canadian heavy oil reservoirs using vertical wells under primary conditions depends on producing the reservoir solids (25, 97-99). The reservoirs in question are generally unconsolidated and produce oil with viscosity in the range of 3000-20,000 mPa s or... 

Fig. 5. Octene hydrogenation initial catalyst is 3-LaNi5H5. Left axis open circles are mol H2 introduced from gas reservoir, solid circles are mol H2 reacted with octene symbol size exceeds the error in these quantities. Right axis catalyst composition, H atoms per mol LaNi5, open circles (with error bars) (Johnson et al. 1994).

Low interfacial tensions and minimal surfactant loss due to interactions with reservoir solids are two of the most important conditions for effective oil recovery by displacement fluids in chemical flooding. These two requirements are, of course, related surfactant adsorption from a microemulsion whose properties have been carefully designed leads to changes in the composition and therefore in the interfacial behavior of the microemulsion. 

The importance of minimizing adsorption has provided the impetus for a number of adsorption studies of both anionic and nonionic surfactants on representative reservoir solids most of these deal with surfactant adsorption from aqueous solution. In general it has been found that the adsorption of petroleum sulfonates on mineral adsorbents increases with decreasing solubility in the solvent. Gale and Sandvik (1) have found that petroleum sulfonate adsorption from brine on clay minerals increased with molecular weight and therefore decreasing solubility in brine. 

The objective of the present work is to determine the static adsorption of petroleum sulfonates from microemulsions on representative reservoir solids and to define the effect of microemulsion composition, specifically its relative oil and brine content, on sulfonate adsorption. It is also of interest to determine the effect of adsorption on the microemulsion oil and brine content because of the relationship between microemulsion composition and interfacial behavior. Consequently, the adsorption of a given petroleum sulfonate was determined from a series of microemulsions where each microemulsion contained different volume fractions of the same oil and brine. The difference in microemulsion composition within such a series was effected either by using a different cosurfactant in each microemulsion or by changing the total surfactant/cosurfactant concentration. The adsorbent was carefully reproduced in each experiment in terms of sand/clay composition and total surface area. All experiments within a series were therefore carried out at constant temperature, pressure, adsorbent composition and total surface area. 

Static petroleum sulfonate adsorption on simulated reservoir solids is affected significantly by the composition of the microemulsion from which the sulfonate is adsorbed. Petroleum sulfonates which are preferentially oil-soluble tend to be adsorbed to a lesser degree from oil-external than from brine-external microemulsions under equivalent conditions. Since the cosurfactant component can be used effectively to obtain a desired microemulsion composition, sulfonate adsorption is affected significantly by the choice of cosurfactant. If an oil-external microemulsion is to be used in a flood, it is preferable to employ a glycol ether cosurfactant, rather than a simple alcohol, because of lower surfactant adsorption in addition, the glycol ether microemulsion would exhibit enhanced salt tolerance which would affect favorably its inter- -facial tension properties. 

An adsorption medium often considered typical of reservoir solids is sandstone. Sandstone is an agglomeration of individual minerals, but the primary component is usually quartz. Other minerals comprising sandstone include chert, feldspar, mica, illite, kaolinite and calcium carbonate. A common type of sandstone used in adsorption research is Berea sandstone [JO, JJj. 

Kipp s apparatus Equipment for the production of a gas by interaction of a liquid and a solid. It consists of three receptacles, the top is reservoir for the liquid and is connected to the bottom. The middle contains the solid and a tap for the gas. When gas is released the liquid rises and reacts with the solid, when the tap is closed the back pressure returns the liquid lo the lower reservoir and reaction cease . Once widely used for the production of H.S (HCl and FeS) and C O (HCl and CaC(3,<). 

Injection of produced water is not a new idea, but the technique has met resistance due to concerns about reservoir impairment (solids or oil in the water may block the reservoir pores and reducing permeability). However, as a field produces at increasingly high water cuts, the potential savings through reduced treatment costs compared with the consequences of impairment become more attractive. 

Koopal and co-workers [186] have extended this thermodynamic analysis to investigate the competitive wetting of a solid by two relatively immiscible liquids. They illustrate the tendency of silica to be preferentially wet by water over octane, a phenomenon of importance in oil reservoirs. 

A special apparatus (Fig. Ill, 40,1) renders the preparation of iodides from alcohols a very simple operation. The special features of the apparatus are —(i) a wide bored (3-4 mm.) stopcock A which considerably reduces the danger of crystallisation in the bore of the tap of the iodine from the hot alcoholic solution (ii) a reservoir B for the solid iodine and possessing a capacity sufficiently large to hold all the alkyl iodide produced (iii) a wide tube C which permits the alcohol vapour fix)m the flask D to pass rapidly into the reservoir B, thus ensuring that the iodine is dissolved by alcohol which is almost at the boiling point. An improved apparatus is shown in Fig. Ill, 40, 2, a and b here a... 

This procedure is used to separate crystallized product from solvent or to remove crap and solids from a liquid. Figure 8 shows the proper apparatus to use. The collecting flask is called a side arm flask and to that extended nipple (tee heel) is attached a vacuum source. The thing that is shoved through the rubber stopper is called a Buchner funnel and is usually made of white porcelain or, preferably, PP. The Buchner funnel, when viewed from above, can be seen to have lots of pin holes in the bottom surface of its reservoir. Over this surface is layered a single sheet of rounded filter paper or paper towel. 

Many continuous extractions involving solid samples are carried out with a Soxhiet extractor (Figure 7.18). The extracting solvent is placed in the lower reservoir and heated to its boiling point. Solvent in the vapor phase moves upward through the tube on the left side of the apparatus to the condenser where it condenses back to the liquid state. The solvent then passes through the sample, which is held in a porous cellulose filter thimble, collecting in the upper reservoir. When the volume of solvent in the upper reservoir reaches the upper bend of the return tube, the solvent and any extracted components are siphoned back to the lower reservoir. Over time, the concentration of the extracted component in the lower reservoir increases. 

Porous Media Packed beds of granular solids are one type of the general class referred to as porous media, which include geological formations such as petroleum reservoirs and aquifers, manufactured materials such as sintered metals and porous catalysts, burning coal or char particles, and textile fabrics, to name a few. Pressure drop for incompressible flow across a porous medium has the same quahtative behavior as that given by Leva s correlation in the preceding. At low Reynolds numbers, viscous forces dominate and pressure drop is proportional to fluid viscosity and superficial velocity, and at high Reynolds numbers, pressure drop is proportional to fluid density and to the square of superficial velocity. 

Geomembrane These liners chiefly provide impermeable barriers. They can be characterized as (1) solid waste containment hazardous landfill, landfill capping, and sanitary landfill (2) liquid containment canal, chemical/brine pond, earthen dam, fish farm, river/coastal bank, waste-water, and recreation (3) mining, leach pad and tailing ponds and (4) specialties floating reservoir caps, secondary containment, tunnel, erosion, vapor barrier, and water purification. Plastics used include medium to very low density PE, PVC, and chlorosulfonated PE (CSPE). (The Romans used in their land and road constructions what we call geomembrane.)... 

---