Erzuah, S.; Fjelde, I.; Omekeh, A.V. The Role of the Mineralogical Composition on Wettability via Flotation Test and Surface Complexation Modeling (SCM). Geosciences2024, 14, 47.
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.
Erzuah, S.; Fjelde, I.; Omekeh, A.V. The Role of the Mineralogical Composition on Wettability via Flotation Test and Surface Complexation Modeling (SCM). Geosciences2024, 14, 47.
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.
Abstract
Minerals are the chief constituents of rocks and they have varied properties such as surface area, surface charge, site densities etc. Hence, numerous interactions are bound to occur in the reservoir during rock-fluids (i.e., rock, crude oil and brine) interactions. This study seeks to assess the role of mineralogical composition on the wettability of Sandstone Rocks (SR) and Mineral Mixture (MM) using both Surface Complexation Modelling (SCM) and flotation test. From the considered sandstone rocks, both the experimental results and its simulated counterpart revealed that, the SR 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 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 prominent surface area. Our developed model portrayed that the main mechanism for oil adhesion onto sandstone minerals was divalent cations bridging. Nonetheless, adhesion of carboxylate (>COO-) onto the illite, montmorillonite and calcite sites also took place with the latter being more pronounced.
Keywords
Mineralogy; Mineral Mixture; Surface Complexation Modelling (SCM); Flotation test; Electrostatic pair Linkage; Bond Product (BP); Total Bond Product (TBP); Cation Bridging; Oil Complex; Carboxylate; PHREEQ-C
Subject
Engineering, Energy and Fuel Technology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
