1. Introduction
Surfactant/polymer (SP) flooding system, as an effective technique for enhancing oil recovery (EOR) in high-water-cut oilfields, has been successfully applied in conventional low-temperature, low salinity sandstone reservoirs in China.[
1,
2] Currently, this technique has been considered to apply to more challenging oilfields, such as high-temperature and high-salinity reservoirs.[
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4,
5]
The Qinghai Gasi reservoir belongs to the sedimentary facies of discernible river deltas, with sandstone, siltstone, and conglomerate as the main rock types. Sandstone and siltstone normally show better oil-bearing properties. The reservoir's storage space is mainly composed of primary pores in sandstones and conglomerates followed by mixed pores, and a small number of secondary pores. The average reservoir depth is 1771 m, and the original formation pressure is 11.90 MPa. The average temperature is 66.5°C, the highest temperature is 78°C, and the total salinity of formation water ranges from 151,000 to 170,000 mg/L.[
6] Given that the Gasi reservoir is typical high-temperature and high-salinity reservoir, improvements must be made for chemical flooding agents to endure the challenging temperature and salinity. Since 1990, the Gasi reservoir has been subject to water flooding development. However, after more than 30 years of water injection, the reservoir has entered a mid-to-high water cut development stage, with a comprehensive water cut of 76% and a recovery factor of 47%[
7]. These figures illustrate that water flooding alone is no longer sufficient to meet the development needs as the reservoir matures. Consequently, to address these challenges, the adoption of SP chemical flooding EOR technology has been proposed.
For high salinity saltwater, available petroleum sulfonate surfactants are easily affected by divalent ions to form precipitates, and high TDS levels can also trigger phase separation phenomena[
8]. The high salinity of water requires the selected surfactant to have stronger water affinity . In order to maintain a balanced affinity to oil and water, surfactants with stronger hydrophilic head groups require longer hydrophobic tail chains. Extended surfactants have been introduced to address this.[
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Extended surfactants are characterized by the inclusion of intermediate polarity groups, such as propylene oxide (PO) or ethylene oxide (EO), situated between the hydrocarbon tail and the hydrophilic head group. This distinct molecular architecture allows the surfactant molecules to extend more effectively into both oil and water phases, enhancing their interfacial activity. Specifically, surfactants featuring alkoxy chains, namely EO and/or PO, demonstrate improved tolerance to environments with high salinity, as many several laboratory studies and pilot tests have proved[
10,
11,
12]. This study focuses on the selection of extended surfactants as its primary research subject, with the objective of enhancing surfactant efficacy in oil reservoir conditions characterized by high temperatures and elevated salinities.
Conventional polymers, such as partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) undergo self-hydrolysis or breakage in high-temperature and high-salinity conditions[
13]. The presence of divalent cations further accelerates this decomposition. [
14]. Therefore, proper molecular design should be taken to enhance high-temperature and high-salinity tolerance and minimize the negative effects of divalent cations.
In recent years, polymer research has focused on increasing the viscosity of polymer solutions, primarily achieved by increasing the molecular weight of the polymers.[
15,
16] A higher molecular weight contributes to a larger hydrodynamic volume of polymer molecules, which elevates the viscosity of polymer solutions. However, in low-permeability reservoirs of some oilfields, the high-molecular-weight polymers cause reservoir plugging due to their lower permeability. However, in oilfield practices, high molecular weight polymers may lead to reservoir blockage, making it difficult to inject polymer solutions. To address this, polymers designed for flooding must satisfy two requirments: (1) they should have a lower molecular weight (2) they should be capable of attaining the necessary viscosity at lower concentrations, under the premise of using produced water for the preparation of polymer solutions. The development of such polymers represents a significant and urgent challenge in the field.
To prepare polymers with both good thickening ability and excellent temperature and salt resistance, current research predominantly utilizes acrylamide as the foundational monomer[
17].Following this approach, when synthesizing new temperature and salt-resistant polymers, acrylamide is used as the base monomer. Carboxyl groups in HPAM are replaced with strongly hydratable anionic groups that do not form precipitates with divalent ions. Additionally, large-volume side groups are introduced to increase the rigidity of large polymer chains, suppressing the drastic reduction in the size of polymer aggregates caused by the participation of inorganic electrolytes. Anionic hydrous groups are introduced into the polymer chain using highly active monomers containing sulfonic acid groups, and large-volume side groups are introduced into the large polymer chain using compounds containing benzene rings. Thus, temperature and salt-resistant polymers are constructed as acrylamide-based copolymers containing benzene rings and sulfonic acid groups.
This paper conducts a feasibility study on the chemical compound flooding (SP) for the Qinghai Gasi oil reservoir. Through experiments such as screening tests of chemical compound flooding formulas and core displacement tests, the effectiveness of chemical flooding methods to improve oil recovery in high-temperature and high-salinity reservoirs is explored. This study lays the foundation for future pilot tests of chemical compound flooding in complex high-temperature and high-salinity oil reservoirs.