Iron Sulfide Scale Inhibition in Carbonate Reservoirs

Abstract

Hydrocarbon production operations include water injection, varying stimulation approaches, and enhanced oil recovery techniques. These treatments often affect reservoir formation, production, and injection facilities. Such sorts of well operations cause the formation of organic and inorganic scales in the near-wellbore region and various production and injection structures. Downhole squeeze treatment is commonly used as a control measure to prevent scale precipitation. A scale inhibitor solution is introduced into a formation by applying a squeeze treatment. The method allows scale inhibitors to adsorb on the internal rock surface to avoid settling down the scale precipitates. Thus, the study of adsorption of different types of inhibitors to prevent scale formation on the reservoir rock through the execution of downhole squeeze treatment is becoming necessary. This study incorporated different experimental techniques, including dynamic adsorption experiments of chelating agents employing a coreflooding setup, inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) to inhibit the formation of iron-containing scales in limestone rocks, and ζ-potential measurements targeting determination of iron precipitation in varying pH environments on calcite minerals. The influence of the inhibitor soaking time and salt existence in the system on chelating agent adsorption was also evaluated in the coreflooding experiments. The findings based on the coreflooding tests reveal that the concentration of chelating agents plays a significant role in their adsorption on carbonate rocks. The treatments with 20 wt % ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and 20 wt % diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid produced the highest adsorption capacity in limestone rock samples by inhibiting 84 and 85% of iron(III) ions, respectively. Moreover, the presence of the salts (CaCl2 and MgCl2) considerably decreased the adsorption of 10 wt % EDTA to 56% (CaCl2) and 52% (MgCl2) and caused nearly 20% more permeability reduction, while more inhibitor soaking time resulted in comparably higher adsorption and lesser permeability diminution. The results of ζ-potential measurements showed that the pH environment controls iron(II) and (III) precipitation, and iron(III) starts to deposit from a low pH region, whereas iron(II) precipitates in increased pH environments in calcite minerals.