Internal Ketone Sulfonate : A New Bio-Sourced Surfactant for Chemical EOR in Sea Water

Abstract

Surfactant Chemical EOR is a proven technology to increase oil recovery with several successful field trials. Offshore trials are less frequent due to the complexity of operations and also because of the limited availability of suitable chemicals adapted to sea water. For using classic anionic surfactants offshore, pretreatment of the water for reducing salinity or the use of alkali are required. In either case an additional unit has to be added to the platform, raising the price of oil production. The structure of the surfactant can be modified for sea water, using ethylene/propylene/butylene and their derivatives to prepare surfactants that are branched and sometimes extended. However sourcing can be an issue due to limitations on production sites. Internal Ketone Sulfonates (IKS) are new bio-sourced surfactants particularly suitable for chemical EOR in sea water. They are a good alternative to petro-derived chemicals with improved raw material availability and carbon footprint. Solubility is proved for TDS higher than 48g/L TDS in synthetic sea water. Phase behavior and low interfacial tensions were evaluated with classical Winsor analysis. Interfacial tension of 3.5*10−4 mN/m between the IKS formulation and dodecane was reached at the optimal salinity of 31 g/L TDS (R+=0.13) for a temperature of 60°C. The formulation was tested for oil recovery under dynamic porous media conditions and allowed to recover RF = 99% (+/-1.7%) after water flood.