During crude oil extraction, various production chemicals are added in order to mitigate or prevent certain process issues, such as wax deposition, asphaltene precipitation or scale formation. While the concentration of these chemicals in crude oil is relatively low, their influence on the separation processes, occurring in the later stage of crude oil processing and produced water treatment, is unknown. What is more, the fluids injected during the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) stages can also partly return, together with the produced crude oil and water. The EOR chemicals often consist of surfactants or polymers that aid in extracting oil trapped in the reservoir pores, but also negatively affect the separation of the dispersed oil from the produced water.

This project will utilize the newly developed microfluidic methodology from the SUBPRO project “Produced Water Quality and Injectivity”, and apply it for studying the effect of the production chemicals on the fundamentals of the produced water treatment. Moreover, the project will focus on improving the screening abilities of the techniques, for instance through actively changing the concentration of given chemical in the oil phase or the pH of the water phase, inside the chip. In addition, based on the conversation with the industrial partners, new methodology that is relevant for the produced water research, can be proposed and investigated. As a result, it is expected that this subproject, building on the experience and work from the previous one, will deliver more precise information on the effect of production and EOR chemicals on the produced water treatment and contribute to a better understanding of underlying fundamental mechanisms, governing the separation processes in the crude oil production processes.