Tag Archive for: Alkaline-Polymer

Approximately sixty percent of crude oil still lay trapped in the reservoir even after primary and secondary recovery processes have been completed, hence the need for a method that further improves recovery. To increase oil recovery and encourage utilization of local content, locally source alkaline and polymer materials were used to improve oil recovery in this study. The local alkaline and polymer used are plantain peel ash and corn starch respectively. The efficiency of the plantain peel ash and corn starch solution were tested using different seven core samples. The core samples were individually flooded with brine (salt and water) for secondary recovery process and different concentrations of plantain peel ash and corn starch both in stand-alone and in combined form were used for tertiary recovery. The results obtained from the experimental work showed that sample-B5 with 0.2g of plantain peel ash and 0.2g of corn starch in 100ml of brine gave the highest cumulative recovery of 86% as to compare to samples B1 and B2 which has the cumulative recovery of 70% and 78% respectively. Sample-B7 which has the highest concentration of corn starch (0.4g/100ml) gave the lowest recovery of 65% due to polymer adsorption on the rock surfaces which alters the rock wettability. The assessment of formation damage was done by evaluating and determining the permeability change after tertiary flooding. The concentrations with plantain peel ash have reduced permeability change. These locally sourced materials can replace synthetic enhanced oil recovery (EOR) chemical when properly modified and refined, and they are also cheap and environmentally friendly.