It has been a practice to use seawater for preparing acid in offshore operations where fresh water is relatively expensive or logistically impossible to use. However, hydrochloric acid will release calcium ion into solution, which will combine with sulfate ion in seawater (greater than 3000 ppm) and calcium sulfate will precipitate once it exceeds its critical scaling tendency. A few studies have provided evidence for this problem and how to address this problem has not been fully examined.
Core flood tests were conducted using Austin Chalks cores (1.5 in. x 6 in. and 1.5 in. x 20 in.) with permeability 5 md to investigate the effectiveness of scale inhibitor. A synthetic seawater was prepared according to the composition of seawater in the Arabian Gulf. Calcium, sulfate ions, and scale inhibitor concentrations were analyzed in the core effluent samples. Solids collected in the core effluent samples were analyzed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) technique and thermodynamic calculation using OLI Analyzer software were conducted to identify the critical scaling tendency of calcium sulfate at different temperatures.
Results showed that calcium sulfate precipitation occurred when seawater was used in any stage during matrix acidizing including preflush, post-flush, or in the main stage. Injection rate was the most important parameter that affected calcium sulfate precipitation; permeability reduction was significant at low flow rates, while at high rates wormhole breakthrough reduced the severity of the problem.
More CaSO4 precipitated at high temperatures, accounting for more significant permeability reduction in the cores. The values of critical scaling tendency at various temperatures calculated by OLI ScaleChem 4.0.3 were believed to be 2.1, 2.0, and 1.2 respectively.
A scale inhibitor (a sulfonated terpolymer) was found to be compatible with hydrochloric acid systems and can tolerate high concentration of calcium (30,000 mg/l). Analysis of core effluent indicated that the new treatment successfully eliminated calcium sulfate scale deposition. The concentration of scale inhibitor ranged from 20 to 250 ppm, depending on the scaling tendencies of calcium sulfate.
This work confirms the damaging effect of preparing hydrochloric acid solutions using seawater on the permeability of carbonate cores. Therefore, it is recommended to use fresh water instead of seawater to prepare HCl acids whenever possible. If fresh water is not available, then a proper scale inhibitor should be added to the acids to avoid calcium sulfate precipitation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2011-12-10539 |
| Date | 2011 December 1900 |
| Creators | He, Jia |
| Contributors | Nasr-El-Din, Hisham, Hill, A. Daniel, El-Halwagi, Mahmoud |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, thesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
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