• Energy Research

Abstract CO2-rock wettability is a key factor which determines the fluid dynamics and CO2 geo-storage capacity. However, the full understanding of real reservoir CO2-wettability is yet to be gained. We thus systematically analysed the wettability of CO2/brine/South West Hub sandstones at various pressures (0.1 MPa, 5 MPa, 10 MPa, 15 MPa, and 20 MPa) at 334 K. A new procedure based on organic carbon isotope tracking (δ13Corg) was proposed to eliminate the effect of artificial organic matter introduced by drilling mud penetration. The results indicate that the advancing (θa) and receding (θr) water contact angles for the CO2/brine/South West Hub sandstone system increase with increase in pressure (ranging from 71° to 118° and 66° to 111°). It can thus be suggested that the system is weakly water-wet to intermediate-wet. When the samples were treated with dichloromethane, a slight decline in organic content was observed leading to slight decrease in water contact angles (i.e. TOC decreased from 0.019% to 0.003% for core C, and the corresponding θa and θr decreased from 118° and 111° to 110° and 104°, respectively, at 20 MPa and 334 K). This wettability analysis demonstrates that (a) of the contact angle is very sensitive to the amount of organic matter and therefore care should be taken to remove artificial organic matter from the sample, and that (b) this condition prevails in a real proposed CO2-storage site. This analysis thus has important implications for assessing the feasibility of long-term CO2 storage and enabling large-scale industrial carbon geological storage projects.

Low-salinity water injection emerges to be a cost-effective and environmentally friendly enhanced oil recovery technique. Furthermore, additives, such as the surfactant and nanoparticles in combina...

Wettability of surfaces remains of paramount importance for understanding various natural and artificial colloidal and interfacial phenomena at various length and time scales. One of the problems discussed in this work is the wettability alteration of a three-phase system comprising high salinity brine as the aqueous phase, Doddington sandstone as porous rock, and decane as the nonaqueous phase liquid. The study utilizes the technique of in situ contact angle measurements of the several 2D projections of the identified 3D oil phase droplets from the 3D images of the saturated sandstone miniature core plugs obtained by X-ray microcomputed tomography (micro-CT). Earlier works that utilize in situ contact angles measurements were carried out for a single plane. The saturated rock samples were scanned at initial saturation conditions and after aging for 21 days. This study at ambient conditions reveals that it is possible to change the initially intermediate water-wet conditions of the sandstone rock surface to a weakly water wetting state on aging by alkanes using induced polarization at the interface. The study adds to the understanding of initial wettability conditions as well as the oil migration process of the paraffinic oil-bearing sandstone reservoirs. Further, it complements the knowledge of the wettability alteration of the rock surface due to chemisorption, usually done by nonrepresentative technique of silanization of rock surface in experimental investigations.