![]() However, more work is required to further explore the most influential parameters affecting LSF response and explain the dominant mechanisms.Ībstract Several laboratory tests have already demonstrated the potential of lowering/manipulating the injected brine salinity and composition to improve oil recovery in carbonate reservoirs. In addition, the proposed experimental approach ensures the verification of LSF effect, either it is positive or negative. To conclude, this paper demonstrates that low-salinity waterflood has a good potential as an IOR technology in carbonate reservoirs. This implies that calcite dissolution is not the dominant mechanism of IOR by LSF. It was also observed that oil recovery can be improved by injection of brines that cannot dissolve calcite based on the geochemical modeling study. This demonstrates that the brine composition plays an important role during waterflooding in carbonate reservoirs, and not only the brine salinity. Furthermore, seawater is more favorable for improved oil recovery than formation brine as injection of seawater after formation brine resulted in extra oil production. ![]() The experimental results confirmed that lowering the water salinity can alter the rock wettability towards more water-wet, causing improvement of oil recovery in tertiary waterflood in plugs from the two reservoirs. In addition, a geochemical study was performed using PHREEQC software to assess the potential of calcite dissolution by LSF. Seawater and several dilutions of formation brine and seawater were flooded in the tertiary mode to evaluate their impacts on oil recovery compared to formation brine injection. The corefloods were conducted on core plugs from two Middle Eastern carbonate reservoirs with a wide variation of rock properties and reservoir conditions. This paper proposes an experimental approach to qualitatively evaluate the potential of LSF to improve oil recovery and alter the rock wettability during coreflood experiments. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the oil recovery improvement by LSF in carbonate reservoirs by performing coreflood experiments. Although, it has been demonstrated that LSF is an efficient IOR method for many sandstone reservoirs, the potential of LSF in carbonate reservoirs is still not well-established as only a limited number of successful coreflood experiments are available in the literature. Abstract Low salinity waterflood (LSF) is a promising improved oil recovery (IOR) technology.
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