Petroleum 1 (2015) 97e105

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Review article

Status of surfactant EOR technology

James J. Sheng*
Texas Tech University, P.O. Box 43111, Lubbock, TX 79409, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Surfactant enhanced oil recovery (EOR) includes surfactant ooding and surfactant stimulation. The
Received 2 May 2015 main functions of surfactants are to reduce interfacial tension and wettability alteration. This paper
Received in revised form is to review the EOR technology related to surfactant injection. The reviewed topics include the
7 July 2015
following:
Accepted 8 July 2015

Surfactant EOR mechanisms

Factors affecting interfacial tension
Keywords:

Trapping number
Surfactant ooding
Surfactant EOR

Screening criteria
Review
Laboratory work
Enhanced oil recovery
Numerical simulation work
Chemical EOR
Summary of pilot and large-scale applications

Surfactants used

Salinity gradient

Surfactant EOR in carbonate reservoirs

Surfactant EOR in shale reservoirs
Copyright 2015, Southwest Petroleum University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on
behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction 2. Surfactant EOR mechanisms

Most of oil elds are under waterooding. It is well known
that some oil called residual oil will remain unproduced after
waterooding. The literature information is not consistent
regarding whether polymer ooding can lower residual oil
saturation over waterooding. Even though polymer ooding
may reduce residual oil saturation [1,2], a signicant portion of
oil will remain in the reservoirs. To produce the residual oil,
surfactants have to be injected. Therefore, surfactant EOR is a
fundamental method. This paper will provide a status of this EOR
technology.
The main functions of surfactants are to reduce interfacial
tension and wettability alteration [3]. Surfactant EOR mecha-
nisms are discussed separately according to these two functions.
2.1. Reduction in interfacial tension
To explain the function of interfacial tension reduction, we
need to rst introduce the relationship between capillary num-
ber versus residual oil saturation. The capillary number, NC, is
dened as

* Tel.: 1 806 834 8477.
E-mail address: james.sheng@ttu.edu.
Peer review under responsibility of Southwest Petroleum University.
Production and Hosting by Elsevier on behalf of KeAi
um
NC ; (1)
scos q
where m is the displacing uid, u is the displacing Darcy velocity,
q is the contact angle, and s is the interfacial tension (IFT) be-
tween the displacing uid and the displaced uid (oil). Several
forms of the capillary number dened by Eq. (1) have appeared
in the literature and summarized by Ref. [4]. Many experimental
data show that as the capillary number is increased, the residual

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access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
98 J.J. Sheng / Petroleum 1 (2015) 97e105
saturations are decreased [5]. The relationship between a re-
sidual saturation and the capillary number is called the capillary
desaturation curve. Stegemeier [6] summarized some published
data between the capillary number and residual oil saturation.
His summarized data show that to reduce waterooding residual
oil saturation by half, the capillary number must be increased by
1000 times from a typical number of 107 for waterooding [4].
From the denition of capillary number (Eq. (1)) with cosq
omitted for simplicity, there are three ways: (1) increasing in-
jection uid velocity u, (2) increasing displacing uid viscosity m
and (3) reducing the IFT s. It is easy to understand that the
capillary number cannot be practically increased 1000 times by
the rst two ways. It is known that the interfacial tension be-
tween a surfactant solution and oil can be reduced from 20 to 30
to the order of 103 mN/m. In other words, by adding surfactants,
the capillary number can be practically increased by more than
1000 times. Due to the low IFT, oil droplets can ow more easily
through pore throats because of reduced capillary trapping. The
oil droplets move forward and merge with the oil down the
stream to form an oil bank.
Another mechanism is related to swelling. In the type I
microemulsion, oil drops are solubilized in the large water
phase. In the type II microemulsion, water is solubilized in the
residual oil so that oil volume becomes larger. In the type III
microemulsion, water and oil solubilize in each other forming a
middle phase. Because of solubilization, oil is swollen so that oil
phase saturation becomes larger, and the resulting oil relative
permeability is increased. Thus it is easier for the oil to be
produced.
Surfactant injection reduces residual saturations so that each
relative permeability is increased. Sheng [4] analyzed the
permeability ratio of aqueous phase to oleic phase from pub-
lished relative permeability data and found that the relative
permeability ratio is decreased in the high aqueous phase satu-
ration range, when IFT becomes lower. Thus, the oil sweep ef-
ciency is improved because of surfactant injection.
2.2. Wettability alteration
Wettability alteration mechanism targets more on carbonate
reservoirs. Carbonates are more likely oil-wet [7,8]. As the rock
becomes more water-wet, water imbibition is enhanced and the
residual oil saturation is reduced. In natural fractured carbonate
reservoirs, surfactant injection changes the matrix to more
water-wet. Then water can imbibe from fractures into matrix
blocks to displace oil out. The relative permeability models and
capillary pressure models resulting from wettability alteration
were proposed by Refs. [9] and [10]. Sheng [7] compared the
effects of different mechanisms in oil recovery related to sur-
factant EOR. Particularly, the effects of wettability alteration and
IFT reduction were compared. His numerical simulation results
show that wettability alteration plays important roles when IFT
is high, and it is effective in the early time. IFT plays very
important roles with or without wettability alteration and is
effective during the EOR entire process.
3. Factors affecting interfacial tension
As discussed in the proceeding section, one of the funda-
mental mechanisms of surfactant-related EOR is reduced IFTs,
which are closely related to water and oil solubilization. The
relationship between IFT and solubilization is described
commonly by the Healy and Reed [11,12] correlations equations
and the Huh [13] equation. Huh equation is more conveniently
used.
Many parameters can affect IFT, such as surfactant and its
concentration, solvent and its concentration, salinity and di-
valents, oil composition (alkane carbon number), watereoil ratio
(WOR), and system parameters (temperature and pressure).
Generally, experiments are needed to quantify their effects. For
some parameters, it is even difcult to qualitatively theorize
their effects. Particularly for surfactant concentration, it may be
believed that a higher surfactant concentration should lead to a
lower IFT. For some surfactants, IFT could decrease as the sur-
factant concentration is increased, as reviewed by Ref. [14]. One
relevant parameter is the optimum salinity. If the pseudo-
components represent the system well, and the system has only
sodium (no divalent), the optimum salinity should be indepen-
dent of overall surfactant concentration and WOR [15]. For a
more complex system, the optimum salinity may be dependent
on overall surfactant concentration [16]. When an alcohol is
added, because alcohol has different partition coefcients in oil
and water phases, the optimum salinity will be affected by WOR
[17].
4. Trapping number
When the Darcy equation is used in Eq. (1) and the cosq is
dropped, the capillary number becomes
 
. 

k V Fp 
kDFp DL
NC ; (2)
s s
In the equation, Fp is the potential of displacing uid and DF
p/DLis the potential gradient. Before discussing the trapping
number, the Bond number is dened as
kgDr
NB ; (3)
s
where Dr is the density difference between the displacing uid
and the displaced uid.
To include the gravity or buoyancy, the trapping number is
derived for a one dimensional ow along a formation with a
dipping angle a [18,4]:
NT NC NB sin a: (4)
For a two-dimensional ow, the trapping number is [19]
q
NT N 2C 2NC NB sina g N2B : (5)
Here g is the angle between the actual ow direction and the
dipping reservoir with the dip angle a (count-clockwise). g can
be calculated from the following relationship:
vF
 vzp Drg
tana g vF
: (6)
 vxp
Jin [19] also gave the derivation of trapping number for three-
dimensional heterogenous, anisotropic porous media. Note that
the capillary number dened in Eq. (2) partly includes the gravity
effect in the potential term. The trapping number includes the
full gravity effect by adding the Bond number. Unfortunately, Eqs.
(4) and (5) are not validated by some available experimental data
[4].
 J.J. Sheng / Petroleum 1 (2015) 97e105 99

5. Technical screening criteria
Technical screening criteria for surfactant ooding are sum-
marized in Table 1. Criteria are empirical, mainly based on eld
project data and technical knowledge about surfactant ooding.
Many parameters can affect the surfactant ooding process,
but the most critical are reservoir temperature, oil composition,
formation water salinity and divalent contents, and clay content.
Oil viscosity and formation permeability may be less important.
Table 1 lists the median values of the important parameters from
real surfactant ooding projects based on our survey. The values
of each parameter are analyzed using the rank and percentile
method, and values are taken at the 50th percentile. Some of
important parameters are discussed next.
5.1. Formation, formation water salinity and divalents
Most of surfactant ooding projects were carried out in
sandstone reservoirs. Fewer applications were carried out in
carbonate reservoirs. One reason for fewer applications in car-
bonate reservoirs is that anionic surfactants have high adsorp-
tion in carbonates and cationic surfactants are expensive. Clays
cause high surfactant adsorption. Therefore, clay contents must
be low for a surfactant EOR application.
Generally, technical screening criteria provide a guide on
formation water salinity and divalents. In practice, reservoirs
have been under waterooding for some years. The reservoir
water salinity may be close to that of the injected water before
surfactant injection. Because limited salinity data before surfac-
tant ooding are available from real projects, the initial forma-
tion water salinity is shown in Table 1. The injection water
salinity for surfactants should be close to the optimum salinity at
which the lowest interfacial tension between oil and water can
be reached. The optimum salinity depends on the crude oil,
surfactants used, etc. For most of surfactants, the optimum
salinity is not very high. Divalents may be associated with sur-
factants, thus detreating surfactant performance. In this paper, a
50,000 ppm of TDS and 100 ppm divalents are proposed based
on the earlier published values and the data from real projects.
used in steam-foam ooding can be very high (e.g., 250  C) [21].
In other words, surfactants are available which can be applied to
high-temperature reservoirs. However, Table 1 shows that most
of researchers have proposed 93.3  C as a limit for reservoir
temperature. The median temperature for the surveyed surfac-
tant projects is only 25.3  C. Without a detailed study, 93.3  C is
used for the temperature criterion in this paper. More research
may raise this limit. Puerto et al. [22] screened alkox-
yglycidylether sulfonates (AGES) with n-octane/NaCl-brine sys-
tems. They found that the systems could be stable up to 120  C
with optimal salinities up to 20% NaCl with suitable combina-
tions of hydrophone and alkoxy chain type (ethylene oxide (EO)
or propylene oxide (PO) and chain length). Barnes et al. [23]
presented internal olen sulfonates which could be stable even
up to 150  C. However, these results are from laboratory and not
applied in eld projects yet. The application conditions of a
furfactant mean that not only is the surfactant stable at these
conditions, but it also must be able to satisfy other conditions
which can lead to a high oil recovery at a low cost, such as low
adsorption and higher solubilization ratios.
The reservoir depth should be not a limiting factor for sur-
factant ooding as long as the reservoir temperature limit is not
violated.
5.3. Formation permeability
As surfactants can reduce residual saturations, relative per-
meabilities are increased. Thus effective permeabilities are
increased. As a result, surfactants can be injected in low-
permeability reservoirs compared with polymers. Sometimes,
surfactants are injected in a low-permeability reservoir to in-
crease well injectivity. For example, an alkaline-surfactant solu-
tion was injected to improve well injectivity in the Big Sinking
eld in the Appalachian Basin of East Kentucky [24]. Rilian et al.
[25] reported that surfactant stimulation increased the forma-
tion permeability and decreased skin damage in the Segoma
eld. Because actual surfactant projects had much higher per-
meabilities (152 mD from the survey presented in Table 1), the
criterion for permeability is set 10 mD, following Refs. [26,27].

5.2. Reservoir temperature and depth 5.4. Oil composition, viscosity and API gravity

Surfactants are quite different. Some surfactants like sulfo- Oil composition is very important to surfactants, as it affects
nate groups can be stable above 200  C [20]. The temperature the range of salinity within which the interfacial tension is low.

Table 1
Summary of screening criteria for surfactant ooding.

Proposed by k (mD) Tr ( C) Formation water salinity, Divalent Lithology Clay mo (cP) So (frac.) Aquifer Gas cap API gravity Depth, ft
(TDS, ppm) (ppm)

[78] 20 121.1 200,000 30 0.2 25

[31] >20 <93.3 50,000 1000 Sandstone Low <20 >0.25 None to week None to week >25 NC
[29] >50 <80 Low Low Sandstone >0.3 Weak Week <6561
[79] >40 <93.3 <100,000 Sandstone & <40
carbonate
[30] >20 <93.3 100,000 Sandstone 100 0.3 >25 <9000
preferred
[26,27] >10 <93.3 Sandstone <35 >0.35 >20 <9000
preferred
[80] >50 <70 50,000 1000 Sandstone Low <150 0.35 None None
[81],a >100 <93.3 <200,000 if Tr < 60  C, <35 >0.45 >20 500e9000
<50,000 if Tr > 60  C,
Surfactant 152 25.3 39,078 Majority Low 5.8 0.4 Generally none Generally none 36.5 1808
projects sandstone
Proposed in >10 <93.3 <50,000 <100 Sandstone Low <35 >0.3 Weak Weak NC NC
this paper

In the table, mo is the oil viscosity, So is the oil saturation before ASP, Tr is the reservoir temperature, NC means not critical.
a
For ASP
100 J.J. Sheng / Petroleum 1 (2015) 97e105
Fig. 1. Types of microemulsions (surfactant systems).
Interestingly, no criterion has been proposed regarding oil
composition in the literature. The surveyed eld projects had
average oil viscosities of 5.8 cP (see Table 1). A new criterion
cannot be justied without a detailed study. Thus Taber et al.'s
[26,27] <35 cP is used as a criterion. Most authors include API
gravity as a screening criterion, but during surfactant ooding
API gravity is less signicant than the effect of viscosity.
Therefore, API gravity is not listed as a necessary criterion in this
paper.
5.5. Oil saturation
Surfactant ooding can reduce residual oil saturation. Even
for a watered-out eld, surfactant ooding can be implemented
to recovery the residual oil from waterooding. But a higher
remaining oil saturation may justify the investment for surfac-
tant injection, as more oil will be recovered from surfactant in-
jection. Considering that the real projects showed the oil
saturation before surfactant ooding is 0.4, the criterion So > 0.3
is proposed.
5.6. Storage capacity
Some criteria were proposed in the literature regarding
porosity f [28e30], thickness h [26,27,29,30], the product fh, the
product fSo [31], or the product fhSo. The porosity is related to
permeability. If the permeability is high enough, the porosity
should be high enough. Therefore, it is not necessary to impose a
criterion for porosity. A higher h does provide a higher volume to
sweep, but proportionally more surfactant volume is injected.
Thus h is not an important criterion.
5.7. Aquifer and gas cap
Pressure maintenance in surfactant ooding is an important
mechanism. If there is a strong aquifer or gas cap, less pressure
maintenance is needed. Thus, a strong aquifer or gas cap will
make surfactant ooding less benecial.
6. Laboratory work
There are so many kinds of laboratory tests which need to be
done, but we could not afford to do every laboratory test in
practice. However, minimum three laboratory tests are needed:
aqueous stability test, salinity scan test and coreood test. The
aqueous stability test is to check if the surfactants are compatible
with the formation water and other chemicals. The salinity scan
test is a phase behavior test using pipettes (therefore, sometimes
called puppet test), as schematically described in Fig. 1. Hand's
[32] equations are used to describe the component distribution
among different phases and between the microemulsion phase
and anther phase. The core coreood test to check oil recovery.
Refer to Fig. 1, when a surfactant solution with some salinity is
mixed with oil, three types of microemulsions will form in order
as the salinity is increased: Winsor type I e oil-in-water micro-
emulsion, Winsor type II e water-in-oil microemulsion, and
Winsor type III e bi-continuous middle-phase microemulsion.
Winsor type is also called type II() or lower-phase micro-
emulsion; Winsor type II is called type II() or upper-phase
microemulsion; Winsor type III is also called middle-phase
microemulsion [4]. Important objective from the salinity scan
test are to select a surfactant or surfactants that can have high
solubilization ratios of oil and water volumes to the surfactant
volume, and to determine the optimal salinity for the selected
surfactants. The optimal salinity corresponds to the maximum
middle-phase volume in Fig. 1. According to Huh's [13] equations,
high solubilization ratios will generate very low interfacial ten-
sions (IFT), preferably in the order of 103 mN/m; and corre-
spondingly a high oil recovery factor (RF) may be obtained.
Selection of surfactants based on the solubilization ratios may be
an alternative to the IFT measurement because we may use Huh's
[13] equations to calculate IFT from the solubilization ratios.
However, measuring IFT directly in the laboratory is preferred in
the Chinese literature.
The coreood test is needed to see whether a signicant oil
recovery could be recovered. For those three types of tests, the
salinity scan test data are most important, as they are used to
calculate interfacial tension, to quantify phase behavior, micro-
emulsion properties like viscosity, and so on.
 J.J. Sheng / Petroleum 1 (2015) 97e105
Generally, the salinity scan tests are conducted using dead
oils because of the difculty to do such tests using live oils. Few
papers reported the experimental work using live oils. When we
say that a surfactant is more soluble in oil, it is equivalent to say
that the optimum salinity is lower. Nelson [33] observed little
difference in phase behavior as a function of equilibrated dis-
solved methane, and the effects of methane on the optimum
salinity of crude oils and synthetic oils were opposite. Bourrel
et al. [34] observed the optimum salinity was increased when
methane was added in n-decane and n-hexane, but decreased in
dodecyl o-xylene (C12OX). Cottin et al. [35] reported a slight in-
crease in the optimum salinity of their live oil compared with
their dead oil. Puerto and Reed [36], Roshanfekr et al. [37] and
Southwick et al. [38] observed that the optimum salinity
decreased when methane was added in oils. Sagi et al. [39] also
observed a decrease in the optimum salinity when either
methane, ethane or CO2 was added in a dead oil. Jang et al. [40]
found that the optimum salinity of a live oil was closer to that of
the dead oil than expected and higher than that of surrogate oils
made based on the equivalent alkane carbon number approach.
Apparently, more papers reported that the optimum salinity of a
live oil was lower than that of the respective dead oil. Kahlweit
et al. [41], Skauge and Fotland [42], Sassen et al. [43], Austad and
Strand [44] and Roshanfekr et al. [37] all observed that the
increased pressure reduced surfactant solubility in crude oils and
the optimum salinity increased. The effect of pressure was
opposite to that of added methane (live oil). And dissolution of
methane dominated the pressure effect. Jang et al. [40] found
that the solubilization ratios were higher thus the interfacial
tensions were lower for live oils than their respective dead oils.
The above phase behavior tests with live oils can be con-
ducted using high-pressure and high-temperature sapphire
tubes [40,45]. Live oils can be dead oils dissolved with light
components like methane at the reservoir pressure, or dead oils
diluted with solvents based on the concept of equivalent alkane
carbon number at the atmospheric pressure. Using the latter
type of oils in coreoods is much easier [45].
7. Numerical simulation work
For simulation software, UTCHEM developed by University of
Texas at Austin is the best software so far to capture the mech-
anisms, but it is difcult to simulate a large eld-scale case
because of slow computation algorithm (sometimes solutions
are not convergent) and lack of functions to include real
geological features. Another weakness of UTCHEM is that it has
not been equipped with visualization package for post-
processing analysis. Fortunately, this weakness can be over-
come by using commercial visualization packages, such as
S3GRAF (http://www.sciencesoft.com/products/s3graf/) and
Krakem (https://www.esss.com.br/kraken/).
A fundamental mechanism of surfactant-related EOR
methods is low IFT which leads to a high capillary number and
thus a low residual oil saturation. IFT is mainly a function of the
amount of oil solubilized in the microemulsion phase [13].
However, ECLIPSE models a two-phase system with the IFT as a
function of surfactant in the water phase. In other words,
different types of microemulsion are not simulated. The inter-
facial tension is a function of surfactant concentration. The
capillary desaturation curve which describes the relationship
between a residual oil saturation and capillary number depends
on rock type not phase. These concepts are not correct. Computer
Modeling Group's STARS-ME is a commercial adaption of
UTCHEM. It models the three types of microemulsions [46].
Surfactant injection is to reduce residual oil saturation and the
101
corresponding relative permeabilities are increased. Sometimes,
a surfactant process is simulated by modifying ow parameters
like relative permeabilities, when a commercial simulator is used
where surfactant mechanisms were not included in the
simulator.
From the theoretical point of view, three types of micro-
emulsion should be formulated in a simulator. However, the type
III microemulsion may not form at a low surfactant concentra-
tion [47e49]. Or the type III microemulsion volume is so small
that it cannot be seen or can be negligible. The amount of sur-
factant in the excess phases would become a more signicant
fraction of the total [50]. In practical surfactant ooding projects,
the injected surfactant concentration is very low. Therefore, a
simple two-phase approximation of microemulsion may be
justied to avoid a struggle to formulate the complex type III
microemulsion in a commercial reservoir simulator. Adibhatla
et al. [9] and Liu et al. [51] made efforts in this direction.
Apparently, no new research results have been published.
Whether the two-phase approximation is sufciently accurate to
describe practical cases needs to be investigated.
As mentioned in the section of laboratory work, a funda-
mental laboratory test is the phase behavior test. Using a simu-
lator like UTCHEM to history match the experimental
solubilization ratios, phase behavior parameters are obtained.
The essential approach for such simulation work is to use core-
ood blocks to represent a test tube at a specic salinity by
setting the porosity equal to 1 and the permeability to a very
large value; the oil and water rates honor the watereoil ratio for
the test tubes; many pore volumes are ushed until the solu-
bilization ratios in coreood blocks are almost equal to those in
the test tube. Such coreood simulation is repeated for all the
test tubes at different salinities. An example of such simulation is
provided in Ref. [4].
Similarly, laboratory coreood tests can be history matched to
calibrate ow parameters which may be used in a pilot-scale,
eld-scale or sector model to optimize the injection schemes
and to predict surfactant EOR performance, and using both the
coreood scale model and the up-scaled model to do sensitivity
studies and perform engineering analysis.
Generally, chemical ooding simulators do not include gas
phase. Such practice is justied because the pressure is usually
above the bubble point and a free gas phase does not exist. If the
reservoir is depleted, a gas phase needs to be included. Patac-
chini et al. [52] used a four-phase chemical simulator to include
gas phase. By doing so, the effect of dissolved gas content on
phase behavior was modeled [52].
8. Summary of pilots and large-scale applications
It is impossible to present detailed project description and
results in this paper. Here we only summarize the main results of
pilots and large-scale eld applications.
8.1. Single well tracer test before a pilot
Before carrying out a eld pilot, generally a single well
(chemical) tracer test (SWTT or SWCT) is conducted. The SWTT is
sometimes called chemical huff and puff [53]. During an SWTT, a
slug of surfactant solution is injected in a well and the oil satu-
ration before and after the surfactant injection is measured. The
main objective is to see how much oil saturation can be reduced.
Such test is less expensive, but there is an uncertainty in esti-
mating oil saturation, and limited information regarding inter-
well connectivity, sweep efciency and injectivity can be
obtained. Surfactant may ow out of the well drainage area. The
102 J.J. Sheng / Petroleum 1 (2015) 97e105
phenomenon is called drift [54]. When a eld pilot is conducted,
more expensive observation wells may be drilled.
8.2. Summary of surfactant projects
Eighty seven eld projects worldwide have been
surveyed:
China 3 Indonesia 3 Zhang et al. [65] synthesized a novel hydroxylpropyl sulfo-
United Kingdom 1 Romania 2 betaine surfactant that can be used in high-temperature
France 2 Russia 1 (30e90  C) and high-salinity (20,000e120,000 ppm) reser-
Germany 1 USA 74
All were onshore cases. A few cases were in carbonate res-
ervoirs and the rest were in sandstone reservoirs. Most of the
projects were conducted in either ve-spot patterns or inverted
ve-spot patterns.
For surfactant EOR in carbonate reservoirs, there are
three surfactant stimulation projects reported from 1990s to
2000s [7]. These projects are the Cottonwood Creek in the
Bighom Basin of Wyoming [55,56], the Yates eld in Texas
[57,58], and the Baturaja formation in the Semoga eld in
Indonesia [25].
8.3. Injection scheme and amount of chemicals injected
A complete injection scheme may include a preush, a main
slug and a postush. But a preush is not very common in sur-
factant ooding. In several of the surveyed surfactant projects,
alkaline preush was carried out to soften the formation water
(remove divalents) to avoid association of divalents with the
subsequently injected surfactants. Here are several examples. A
slug of sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate solution was pre-
ushed in the Bell Creek surfactant/polymer project (surfactant
injection followed by a polymer drive) to soften the formation
water [59]; sodium carbonate was injected to preush the Salem
eld to reduce divalents through precipitation [60]; sodium tri-
polyphosphate preushed the Cushing eld to reduce barium ion
[61]. In the Glenn Pool surfactant ood expansion project,
lignosulfonate was tested as a sacricial adsorbate [62].
From the available data of the surveyed projects, the median
amount of surfactant used in the main surfactant slug was 52 in
terms of the product of injection pore volume and concentration,
both units in %. This amount is much higher than that used in the
ASP projects which is 9.44 [63]. The median injection pore vol-
ume was 0.1 PV, and the median surfactant concentration was
5.2%. In the mobility control postush slug, the amount of
polymer injected (product of pore volume and concentration,
both units in %) was 5.65. The median postush pore volume was
0.7 PV, and the median polymer concentration was 0.08%
(800 ppm). Biocide concentrations injected were typically a few
hundred ppm. However, in the Glenn Pool project, 3000 ppm
was used [62].
8.4. Chemicals used
The alkalis used in the preush were sodium hydroxide, so-
dium carbonate, sodium silicate and sodium triphosphate. Both
biopolymer and synthetic polymers were used in the postush.
Typical types of surfactants used in EOR are petroleum sulfonate,
alkyl benzene sulfonate, carboxylate, and chrome lignin (lignite).
The relatively new developed types of surfactants are
biosurfactant and Gemini [64]. The surfactants used in eld
projects include these: different petroleum sulfonates, ethyl
sulfate, ethoxyalkylphenol sulfonate, alkane sulfonate, fatty-acid
alkanolamide double polyethenoxy ether, alkyl aromatic sulfo-
nate, ether sulfate, ammonium lignosulfonate (Petrolig ERA-27),
nonioninc PLURONIC L64 (BASF), nonionic POA, CAC, Petrostep
surfactants, Butyl Cellosolve (Dow), SO3NH4, SPS (CS-2000),
Lignin II, TRS 10-410 Sulfonate, Witco's TRS 10-410, TRS-40, TRS-
18, Peronate TRS 10-80, Texaco LN60-COS, Conoco Alfonic 610-
50, S13D, S2.
voirs. The betaine surfactant is synthesized with cheap raw
material of fatty acid, and its functional group of hydroxylpropyl
sulfo hydrophilic group can improve the surfactant's heat resis-
tant and salt tolerant abilities. Many new surfactants are devel-
oped in laboratories in China which are presented in our
database. For surfactants used in hard brines, use of adsorption
inhibitors was proposed by Ref. [66].
Surfactant is more effective (higher solubilization) without an
added cosolvent such as alcohol. In practice, cosolvents are
almost always added to surfactant formulations to minimize the
occurrence of gels, liquid crystals, emulsions or polymer-rich
phase separating from the surfactant solution, to lower the
equilibration time, and/or to reduce microemulsion viscosity.
Some cosolvents and alcohols used were Exxon Corexit 9439
(ethoxylated alcohol), isopentanol, isopropanol (IPA), N-butanol,
isobutyl alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, nonylphenol, hexanol, pri-
mary amyl alcohol and normal butyl alcohol.
In terms of surfactants for wettability alteration in carbon-
ates, cationics, anionics and nonionics were used in research for
chemical EOR in carbonate reservoirs. Many cationics were used
in laboratory studies, as reviewed by Ref. [67]. Some of anionic
surfactants used by Ref. [68] were alkyl aryl ethoxylated sulph-
onates and propoxylated sulfate. Hirasaki and Zhang [69] used
ethoxylated and propoxylated sulfates. Nonionic surfactants
were used by Refs. [57] and [56]. For more details, see Ref. [7].
9. Salinity gradient
In surfactant ooding, it was believed that a negative salinity
gradient was needed. The negative salinity gradient means the
salinities of preush water slug, surfactant slug, and postush
slug (polymer solution and/or water drive) are in descending
order. The negative salinity gradient was proposed based on the
relationship that the optimum salinity decreases as the surfac-
tant concentration is decreased [16]. Because of surfactant
adsorption and retention, the surfactant concentration will be
decreased as the surfactant solution moves forwards. If the op-
timum salinity decreases with surfactant concentration, the
optimum salinity also decreases as the surfactant solution move
forwards. Thus, the decreasing salinity will be consistent with
the decreasing optimum salinity so that the optimum salinity is
maintained as the surfactant solution move forwards. As Sheng
[14] discussed, some surfactants exhibit higher optimum salinity
as the surfactant solution is diluted. In other words, the surfac-
tant optimum salinity could increase as the surfactant solution
moves forwards. If the same reasoning was followed, a salinity
gradient opposite to the negative salinity gradient (positive
salinity gradient) would be needed. Simulation results show that
positive salinity gradient does not lead to a higher oil recovery
[14]. Therefore, this reasoning is questionable.
One benet of the negative salinity gradient is that a higher-
salinity slug forms an oil external microemulsion in the front.
 J.J. Sheng / Petroleum 1 (2015) 97e105
The oil external microemulsion has a higher viscosity so that it
would mitigate surfactant ngering ahead [70]. One problem to
form a high-salinity slug ahead of the surfactant slug is that a
preush water slug of a high salt concentration needs to be
injected in an originally low salinity reservoir. This will result in
an additional cost for the project.
Sheng [14] did simulation study to investigate this issue. His
simulation results show that the negative salinity gradient may
not be necessary. He proposed an optimum salinity prole which
has the following characteristics:
1. The optimum salinity must be used in the surfactant slug.
2. Two guard slugs with the same optimum salinity are placed
immediately before and after the surfactant slug. The opti-
mum salinity in the guard slug before the surfactant slug is
preferred but not mandatory.
3. The salinity in the postush must be below the lower salinity
bound of Type III.
His simulation results show that such optimum salinity pro-
le leads to the highest oil recovery compared with different
salinity schemes, especially higher than that from the corre-
sponding negative salinity gradient. However, the simulation
results have not been veried by experimental data or eld data.
The validity of the results also depends on the robustness of the
simulation software used which is UTCHEM in this case.
10. Surfactant EOR in carbonate reservoirs
As the survey results presented earlier in this paper show that
almost all surfactant EOR were conducted in sandstone reser-
voirs except a few surfactant stimulation projects in carbonate
reservoirs. The main mechanism is to change wettability. Many
laboratory studies focused on using cationic surfactants to
change wettability from oil-wet to water-wet. Typical work was
done by Austad and his co-workers [71,72]. Hirasaki and Zhang
[69] explained how adding Na2CO3 change wettability of car-
bonate rock surfaces. This is because of the dissociation of the
naphthenic acids in the crude oil with increasing pH. Some even
proposed that low-salinity water can change carbonate wetta-
bility [67]. For more details about surfactant EOR in carbonate
reservoirs, see Ref. [7].
11. Surfactant EOR in shale reservoirs
As unconventional shale oil and gas resources are becoming
increasingly important hydrocarbon supplies, improving hydro-
carbon recovery using surfactants is one of the obvious choices,
because surfactants can reduce interfacial tension to reduce
capillary phase trapping, and change wettability to enhance
water imbibition. The literature on shale oil rocks indicates that
they are most likely oil-wet [73e75]. Shuler et al. [76] did some
surfactant spontaneous imbibition tests. The core slices they
used were 1.5 inches in diameter and inches in thickness.
Wang et al. [75] also investigated brine imbibition into the
outcrop Pierre shale core slices. The core sample thicknesses
were 0.65e5 mm. Both of these groups used very thin slices
because it is well known that the spontaneous imbibition pro-
cess is very slow [7]. Takahashi and Kovscek [77] studied the
wettability of a low-permeability siliceous shale at different pH
values and found that the shale samples became more water-wet
at very low or very high pH. Mirchi et al. [73] observed that
adding surfactants in brine reduced the interfacial tension be-
tween brine and oil and increased the dynamic contact angle of
oil drops (became more water-wet).
103
Acknowledgments
This work, especially eld data collection part, was nancially
supported by the Joint Industry Project (JIP), Chemical EOR
Knowledge Database. The nancial support from the member
companies in this JIP are gratefully appreciated.
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