Researchers at DHRTC are working in close collaboration across disciplines and institutions towards a better understanding of water flooding of oil reservoirs in the search for the optimal composition of Smart Water.
Collaboration across disciplines and institutions is at the heart of Danish Hydrocarbon Research and Technology Centre (DHRTC). A great example of this is a team of researchers from the work programme Advanced Water Flooding 1 who are collaborating across disciplines, institutions and work packages in an effort to understand the mechanisms happening in the reservoir upon water flooding.
"A key issue in the work I do is to ensure proper quality of the water analysis."
Sofie Nitsche Gottfredsen, PhD Student, DHRTC
Previous research suggests that magnesium plays a key role. At DHRTC, the researchers are investigating why, and try to understand the mechanism behind effective Smart Water flooding. All this will contribute to an enhanced oil recovery from the North Sea.
PhD student Sofie Nitsche Gottfredsen from the DHRTC work package ‘Reservoir Fluid Characterization’ has joined forces with colleague Jiasheng Hao from DHRTC work package ‘Recovery Processes on Core Scale’ in an effort to investigate the interaction between chalk and brines with different ionic compositions.
”Most important in this work is to change one parameter at a time. Otherwise, we do not know what parameter that changes the production. In the collaboration with Jiasheng we can target our experiments and deepen our understanding of the reactions happening at the chalk surface,” explains Sofie Nitsche Gottfredsen.
Recently, Senior Research Scientist from GEUS Niels Schovsbo has also joined the Reservoir Fluid Characterization team. Niels will work closely together with Sofie and analyze data from previous samples in an effort to improve the process of analysis.
”A key issue in the work I do is to ensure proper quality of the water analysis. Previous analyses and water samples contain a lot of uncertainty, which makes it hard to draw conclusions on them. Niels and I will work a lot with data mining and compare old data with new data of more known quality.” Says Sofie Nitsche Gottfredsen.
The work by Niels and Sofie will help shine light on the differences in the composition of the formation waters of the reservoirs. This knowledge will be used when deciding on which injection brine to use in the water flooding of the respective reservoirs.
Learn more about Sofie and her project right here.