The Role of the Mineralogical Composition on Wettability via Flotation Test and Surface Complexation Modeling (SCM)
No Thumbnail Available
Files
Date
2024-02-06
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Geosciences, MDPI
Abstract
Minerals are the chief constituents of rocks and have varied properties, such as the surface
area, surface charge, site density, etc. Hence, numerous interactions are bound to occur in a reservoir
during rock–fluid (i.e., rock, crude oil and brine) interactions. This study seeks to assess the role
of the mineralogical composition in the wettability of sandstone rocks (SRs) and mineral mixture
(MM) using both surface complexation modeling (SCM) and a flotation test. From the considered
sandstone rocks, both the experimental results and the simulated counterparts revealed that the SRs
were preferentially hydrophilic. For the MM, when the mass fraction of the hydrophobic mineral
was increased, the affinity of the MM became slightly hydrophobic, and vice versa. For the dominant
sandstone reservoir rock minerals with predominantly negatively charged surfaces, negligible oil
adsorption took place due to the interfacial repulsive forces at the oil–brine and mineral–brine
interfaces. For the MM with low calcite content, the wetting preference was influenced by the
mineral with a prominent surface area. Our developed model portrayed that the main mechanism
of oil adhesion onto sandstone minerals was divalent cation bridging. Nonetheless, adhesion of
carboxylate (>COO−) onto the illite, montmorillonite and calcite sites also took place, with the latter
being more pronounced.
Description
Keywords
Citation
Erzuah, S.; Fjelde, I.; Omekeh, A.V. The Role of the Mineralogical Composition on Wettability via Flotation Test and Surface Complexation Modeling (SCM). Geosciences 2024, 14, 47. https://doi.org/10.3390/ geosciences14020047