SUBSTITUTION OF PETROLEUM BASE WITH MES BASE SURFACTANT FOR EOR: LABORATORY SCREENING

Abstract

Most of Indonesian oil fi eld had been categorized as mature fi led in which production had been declined
for some time. Therefore EOR (Enhanced Oil Recovery) technology is a must to be implemented to these

kinds of fi eld. There are several EOR technologies had been employed successfully in laboratory and also
fi eld scales, including gas, thermal, and chemical injection. Most Indonesian oil fi elds have productive
layers depths below 2200ft that will not suitable for gas injection. So that chemical injections become an
important alternative that can be implemented to more wide range of depths. These technologies cover
alkaline, surfactant, and polymer injection. This paper will highlight the selection and formulation of
surfactant formulated from MES (Methyl Ester Sulfonates) produced from Palm Oils. These palm oils are
available very abundant in Indonesia due to plenty farm palm oil in Indonesia. Normally Surfactants are
formulated from petroleum sulfonates which are generated from petroleum base. By Using Surfactant that will
be manufactured from palm oil, it will be expected that the price will be cheaper compare to the surfactant
from petroleum. A series of researches have been done to select the sources of palm oils, producing MES
by sulfonation processes, and fi nally surfactant screening for EOR. Several types of MES produced from
varies of palm oil taken from market such as: CPO (crude palm oil), several packed palm oils of different
trademarks have been generated. These MES, then, have been given codes to differentiate among these MES
such as: 1. CCO-MES (A), 2. CCO ME-MES (B), 3. Oleic Acid- MES (C), 4. Natrium Bisulfi t- MES1 (D),
5. ME+H2SO4-MES2 (E), 6. CPO-MES (F). These MES production, then, have been formulated to become
surfactant formula by adding some chemicals and solvent. After that alkaline ((Na2CO3) with optimized
concentrations were added to generate the best EOR properties. All those Surfactant-MES have been tested
using Lemigas standard laboratory EOR screening; those are compatibility tests, IFT measurements, thermal
stability, adsorption, fi ltration, phase behavior, imbibitions and core fl ooding. The result of the screening of
the MES-chemicals mixtures shows that mixture of CPO-MES (F) with chemical and solvent with the mixture
composition denoted as FChS811 has the best performance. 1% of this mixture has the best properties for
EOR after adding 0.1% of Alkaline (Na2CO3). Laboratory test results indicates that fulfi ll screening criteria
suh as good compatibility and no precipitation, low IFT, thermal stability, low adsorption, low fi ltration
ratio, Winsor type-I phase behavior, high RF on imbibition and core fl ooding tests. This Surfactant-MES
mixture has a potential to be implemented for a fi eld trial with Huff and Puff method.