We A14

Optimization of Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer
(ASP) Flooding Minimizing Risk of Scale
Deposition
O. Vazquez* (Heriot Watt University), I. Fursov (Heriot Watt University), A.
Beteta (Heriot Watt University) & E. Mackay (Heriot Watt University)

SUMMARY
Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer (ASP) flooding, which is classified as chemical EOR (Enhanced Oil
Recovery) technique, has a great potential to recover an additional 10-25% of the oil in place, as
demonstrated during various field pilot tests. A typical ASP flooding comprises of three stages: main ASP
slug, polymer post slug and finally a water slug. The surfactant reduces the interfacial-tension between the
displacing fluid and oil, the alkaline reduces the surfactant adsorption and creates in-situ natural surfactant,
and the polymer decreases the water to oil mobility ratio. However, the deposition of inorganic scales
directly attributed to geochemical processes during ASP flooding can significantly impact the viability of
ASP floods.
ASP flooding has economic limitations due to the large volumes of chemicals injected. Therefore,
technical and economical feasibility of ASP flooding depends on the effective use of the injected
chemicals and slug formulation. The main purpose of this paper is to describe the automatic optimisation
of ASP flooding designs using an optimization algorithm, in particular, PSO (Particle Swarm
Optimization). The algorithm identifies the most efficient optimum ASP design for a given set of criteria,
specifically minimizing the total chemical expense and the scaling risk, and maximizing the oil revenue
and NPV (Net Present Value).

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24-27 April 2017, Stavanger, Norway
Introduction

The demand for energy is currently increasing whereas the hydrocarbon reserves are depleting. In
addition, hydrocarbon reserves located on offshore and remote areas impose great challenges not only
in terms of discovery of new assets, but also for further development. Therefore, oil production from
the mature oil fields by Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) methods is under consideration. The fact that
the majority of oil fields have been developed by water flooding makes Chemical Enhanced Oil
Recovery (CEOR) attractive. Among the types of the CEOR methods, Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer
(ASP) flooding is the most promising due to its great effectiveness created by the combination of
alkaline, polymer and surfactant (Sheng, 2014). ASP floods consists of injecting alkaline, surfactant
and polymer. The synergy of these three chemicals results in a higher recovery rate, normally 20-23%
higher than plain water flooding. This incremental recovery is attributed to improved sweep and
displacement efficiency (Karazincir et al, 2011). This technique targets the gradual enhancement of oil
recovery by increasing interfacial tension, decreasing capillary number, enhancing microscopic
displacement, improving mobility ratio and increasing sweep efficiency (Olajire, 2014).

The interest in ASP has been significant over the years with numerous laboratory research studies being
performed (Al-Hashim et al, 1996; Bourrel et al., 1980; Manrique et al., 2000; Qi et al., 2000; Salager
et al., 1979; Hernandez et al., 2001). There have been numerous ASP field tests conducted worldwide;
China has seen the largest number of implementations, while 7 projects have been carried out in the
USA, 3 in Canada, 2 in India and one in Venezuela (Sheng, 2014). The achieved recoveries in these
projects has been 21.4 23.4 % greater than water injection alone. All these projects have been
conducted in onshore fields, apart from the project in Venezuela which was offshore in Lake Maracaibo
(Manrique et al., 2000). There have been reports about planned ASP flooding in four offshore fields:
the St. Joseph in Malaysia and La Salina in Venezuela (Hernandez et al., 2003; Manrique et al., 2000;
Moreno et al, 2003); an unnamed field is in development in Malaysia (Zakaria et al., 2016); and a Single
Well Chemical Tracer Test was performed in an unnamed field in the UAE (Al-Amrie et al., 2015;
Levitt et al., 2016). However, limited information is available about these projects. Finally, there have
been several numerical studies about the design flood optimisation, in particular slug size and
concentration of the injected chemicals (Carrero et al., 2007; Zerpa et al., 2004).

Unfortunately for production engineers, the positive effects of the ASP flood come with
significant challenges. First of all, ASP slug injectivity is low mainly due the associated high
viscosity, but other mechanism may have an impact such as shear thickening, adsorption,
crosslinking, microgels/fisheyes, etc (Glasbergen et al., 2015). The emulsification process which
takes place in ASP flooding may be challenging; on one hand, the formed emulsion negatively
affects the production - it raises injection pressure, and reduces injection rate and oil production rate.
But on the other hand, the emulsion formed in ASP enhances oil recovery. On the whole, it is
generally believed that the benefits of emulsion overcome its drawbacks. In addition, polymer
degradation also poses a risk, with an increased rate of hydrolysis at the elevated pH used in ASP
(Levitt et al., 2011b) leading to potential precipitation with divalents. The potential for thermal and
mechanical degradation of the polymer is also present, as it is with standard polymer floods (Sorbie,
1991). The last problem is scaling; severe scale has been encountered in numerous wells
operated by ASP (Umar, 2012). Scale can deposit in various locations such as wellbores, ground
equipment, surface pipelines. As a result, operational problems are often experienced in production
wells. For example, in Daqing oilfield, which has been ASP flooded, scale deposition resulted in the
breakdown of screw pumps resulting in a loss of output. Scale deposition in ASP floods is due to the
alkaline portion of the injected slug; the injection of a high pH solution can dissolve quartz silica.
Dissolved silica is stable at high pH, but it polymerises at neutral pH, resulting in silicate scales
deposition. Despite all of the disadvantages, the ASP flooding has been recognized as a cost effective
CEOR method (Karazincir et al, 2011).

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Alkaline-Surfactant-Polymer (ASP) flooding

Alkali Surfactant Polymer (ASP) flooding is the combination of three established chemical EOR
technologies that provide a synergistic benefit when co-injected. Each component would provide an
EOR benefit if applied alone, but when applied as a combined ASP treatment, the oil recovery is
enhanced beyond the sum of each individual component (Sheng, 2013). The combination of
technologies allows two types of EOR to be achieved with a single slug: improved sweep efficiency
(from the polymer) and improved pore scale displacement (from the alkali/surfactant). Despite the
extensive research and great potential for EOR, ASP has only seen 21 field implementations (pilots and
above) versus 87 surfactant only field cases (Sheng, 2015) and 72 polymer only cases (Standnes, and
Skjevrak, 2014).

Alkali

Alkali flooding saw implementation as early as 1927 (Johnson, 1976) and has several proposed EOR
mechanisms. The most cited cause behind the improved recovery is saponification of the acidic
components present in the crude oil leading to low interfacial-tension (IFT) (Falls et al., 1994;
Fortenberry et al., 2013, 2015).

When combined into an ASP process the alkalis purpose changes somewhat; the high pH caused by
the alkali results in lower adsorption for the anionic surfactants (Falls et al., 1994; van den Pol et al.,
2015) the high pH alkali creates a negative charge on the rock surface inhibiting the anionic surfactant
from adsorbing. It has also been suggested that the soap generated in-situ by the alkali will adsorb onto
the rock surface in place of the surfactant as a sacrificial agent (Falls et al., 1994).

The choice of alkaline species employed in an ASP flood can have dramatic implications for the success
of the project. Sodium Hydroxide was favoured for many years, but its use has fallen off in recent years
due to very high levels of adsorption and reservoir plugging (Cheng, 1986; Karazincir et al., 2011).
Weak and buffered alkaline species, such as Sodium Carbonate, have been investigated as substitutes
for Sodium Hydroxide (Southwick et al., 2014). Weak alkalis require a higher concentration to reach a
certain pH than strong alkalis (e.g. Sodium Hydroxide); however, this enables the concentration to be
increased to compensate for reservoir consumption without generating an excessively high pH (Sheng,
2013; Southwick et al., 2014). Recent work has looked at using Ammonia, a weak buffered alkali, as
the alkaline species as it does not have the same potential for causing oilfield scale as Hydroxide and
Carbonate (Southwick et al., 2014; Sharma et al., 2014).

Surfactant

Surfactant flooding is performed in order to reduce the residual oil saturation; the key mechanism
behind this is lowering of the oil-water interfacial tension (IFT) (Sheng, 2015). By lowering the IFT,
the surfactant increases the capillary number which in turn leads to the release of trapped oil. In order
to obtain the lowest possible IFT it is necessary to generate a Type III Winsor surfactant/oil/water
micro-emulsion (Winsor, 1954; Nelson and Pope 1978). This type of micro-emulsion is found within a
narrow optimum salinity window, however, by combining the surfactant with an alkali species this
window is widened (Falls et al., 1994).

As IFT is tied to salinity, and to surfactant concentration, careful consideration of the salinity of the
pre-flush, main slug and drive water is required as the mixing front and surfactant adsorption may
push the slug out of the optimal salinity. The concept of a salinity gradient was put forward as an
alternative to performing the flood at a constant salinity in an attempt to control the phase behaviour
throughout the EOR flood (Hirasaki et al., 1983). Hirasaki put forth the negative salinity gradient,
that is to say the salinity decreases from the formation water to the drive water. This results in a less
disperse ASP slug as it transitions from Type II to III to I: in the Type II region the slug is retarded,
while the Type I region mobilises trapped surfactant. A non-negative salinity gradient has been put

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forward for reservoirs that have a low salinity formation water or reservoirs that have been heavily
water flooded (Levitt et al., 2011a).

Polymer

Polymer flooding is an established EOR technology that has seen effective use for many years (Thomas
et al., 2013; Sorbie, 1991). The aim of polymer flooding is to alter the mobility ratio (M = o/w)
between the water and oil. By increasing the viscosity of the water phase the mobility ratio is reduced
i.e. the aqueous phase has an equivalent or lower viscosity than the oil (M1) . As a result the areal and
vertical sweep efficiency is improved, and viscous fingering is minimised (Sorbie, 1991). There is also
the suggestion that the viscoelastic nature of EOR polymers can cause a reduction in the residual oil
saturation (Vermolen et al., 2014; Lotfollahi et al., 2016).

Partially hydrolysed polyacrylamide (HPAM) is the most commonly used EOR polymer, although
biopolymers such as Xanthan have seen use as well. HPAM is an anionic polymer with a flexible coil
structure, and as a result its conformation is influenced by the ionic strength of the solvent. As salinity
of the solvent brine increases the HPAM begins to coil and decreases in hydrodynamic size thus
lowering the viscosity of a given concentration of polymer in solution (Sorbie, 1991). A review of field
polymer floods found that out of the 72 fields examined, 57 used HPAM while biopolymer (including
Xanthan) was only employed in 5 (Standnes, and Skjevrak, 2014).

Traditional polymer flooding using HPAM has a variety of factors that could lead to viscosity loss and
thus poor recovery factors key degradation mechanisms are: Mechanical Degradation; Oxidative
Degradation; and Hydrolysis/Chemical Degradation. When employed in an ASP process the potential
for the polymer undergoing hydrolysis is increased due to the high pH levels (Levitt et al., 2011b).
When HPAM hydrolyses, the acrylamide functional groups are converted to acrylic acid. The higher
acrylic acid content causes an increased level of sensitivity to divalent cations and can lead to
precipitation of divalent-polymer complexes above a certain level of hydrolysis/divalent concentration
(Zaitoun and Potie, 1983; Ryles, 1988). It should be noted that HPAM would be expected to hydrolyse
under neutral conditions even at moderate temperature such as 60oC (Swiecinski et al., 2016). The
structural changes caused by hydrolysis have the potential to affect the polymer viscosity even without
precipitation simply due to increased charge on the molecule: in low salinity solutions, or fresh water,
the increased charge results in greater uncoiling and thus increased viscosity; in solutions with
significant divalent levels, the repulsion between charged groups on the polymer backbone is reduced
due to the attraction from the cationic species, as a result viscosity can decrease with increasing
hydrolysis prior to reaching the cloud point (Martin and Sherwood, 1975).

Risk associated with ASP flooding

ASP flooding is not free of risks and challenges, associated with the injected chemicals, which can
result in very tight oil-water emulsion, causing great problems top side in separation (Li et al, 2013).
ASP flooding has been associated with other operational problems such as low injectivity, polymer
degradation, corrosion and scale deposition (Bataweel and Nasr-El-Din, 2011). ASP scaling is normally
a mixture of carbonate and silicate scales, carbonates scales are well known and there are a variety of
treatments. Silicate scale formation mechanism is complex (Olajire, 2005), with the following
proposed mechanism (Amjad and Zuhl, 2008): Alkali injection at a pH of up to 11 or higher can
dissolve the quartz silica and transport it through the reservoir. While the dissolved silica is stable at
high pH (Sonne et al., 2012), upon mixing with connate water (near neutral pH) the pH of the solution
drops and the silica polymerises and forms a colloidal silica nanoparticles. These nanoparticles are
then able either conglomerate and form an amorphous silica scale, or react with magnesium to form
magnesium silicate (Arensdorf et al., 2010; Sazali et al., 2015).

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Objective of study

The objective of any oil producing project is to produce oil as economically as possible, in other words
to make as high a revenue as possible. As with other CEOR technologies, ASP flooding is commonly
applied when primary and traditional secondary recovery methods become uneconomical. The long
production history of a mature field results in a greater degree of confidence in the reservoir description
and, consequently, more accurate predictions for the project (Sorbie, 1991). ASP flooding should be
carefully planned before it can be implemented; one of the main tasks in panning the ASP project is
deciding on the quantity of the chemicals alkaline, surfactant and polymer - which will be injected
into the reservoir. Generally, in any CEOR techniques, the higher amount of chemicals are injected, the
higher recovery factor is obtained. However, the total design flooding expense should be considered,
the highest recovery rate does not necessarily mean the highest overall revenue. Another important
factor that should be considered is the risk of scale deposition in the production system, which will
cause high expensive well operations and the subsequent deferred oil production.

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the automatic optimisation of ASP flooding designs
using an optimization algorithm, in particular, PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization). The
algorithm identifies the most optimum ASP design for a given set of criteria, specifically
minimizing the total chemical expense and the scaling risk, and maximizing the oil revenue.
Optimization Algorithm

The aim of optimization is the maximization or minimization of a real valued function, which
is commonly called the objective function. The objective function depends on a number of input
values (parameters) taken from the parameter space. The latter can be constrained by certain bounds,
e.g. the minimum and maximum values of each parameter. The process of optimization involves
determining the parameter values which deliver the maximum or minimum to the objective function.

The optimization algorithm used in this study is PSO, which is a population based stochastic
search method algorithm that represents the birds flock behaviour to find food (Reyes-Sierra and
Coello Coello, 2006; Kennedy and Eberhart, 1995). PSO has the advantage of employing only the
objective function values, it does not require its gradients. The algorithm can be used to minimize a
wide range of objective functions, including the non-convex and noisy. A number of studies
applied PSO for reservoir engineering problems such as identification of well history matched
reservoir models (Mohamed et al., 2010a, 2010b), identification of layer flow rate distribution to
match tracer return in a squeeze treatment (Vazquez et al., 2014) and optimisation of scale squeeze
treatments (Vazquez et al. 2016).

A particle is defined as an individual part of the population (swarm) which corresponds to a potential
solution, the position of the particle in each generation varies based on the velocity equation, see
below. The equation identifies the fly direction to improve the current particle position at each
generation. The velocity equation is determined by the position of the particle itself showing the
highest level of success, which is denoted as Personal Best (pbest), the position of the best
particle in the entire population, denoted as Global Best (gbest), as described before (Vazquez et al,
2016).

+1 = + 1 1 ( ) + 2 2 ( ),

+1 = +1 +

where: is the velocity of particle i at iteration k

is the position of particle i at iteration k
is the inertia parameter
1 , 2 random number in the range [0,1]

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 1, 2 are the acceleration terms

Objective function

The objective function calculates the net FOE (Field Oil Recovery efficiency). The net FOE determine
the recovery after deductions, which include a penalty to account for scale deposition. Scale
deposition will prevent oil production, resulting in oil production deferment and well
intervention. Well interventions, which could consist of removal or prevention of scale deposition. In
either scenario, the well will be shut-in for a period of time. The Net FOE is calculated as follows:

Net FOE = FOE - penalty

Penalty describes the financial penalty due to scale deposition, which is expressed also as barrels of
oil, to determine the Net FOE. As a result, the optimisation algorithm will try to find the flood design
not simply the highest FOE, but the most profitable FOE which will generate the highest Net FOE,
where financial penalty due to scale deposition will be minimised, and so the scale deposition risk.

ASP flood scaling financial penalty in terms of FOE

As discussed before, scale deposition can significantly reduce the well productivity. In order to re-
establish the well productivity, the well might need to be shut-in for work over operations, which will
incur in additional expenditure. Silicate scale deposition is an important issue in ASP flooding, which
has been observed (Olajire, 2015; Sheng, 2014). The additional cost of the shut-in operations either to
prevent or to treat scale deposition is incorporated as a financial penalty. The penalty was calculated
as a function of the produced pH. Silicate scale deposition occurs if the pH level reaches
values around 11. At these conditions silicate scales will form if the pH is reduced to a level
that will allow the polymerization of dissolved silica, where subsequently scale is deposited. In
addition, scale inhibitors lose efficiency at high pH (Dyer et al., 2013). Thus, if scale is deposited,
the well will be shut-in for five days to allow well work overs to treat scale related productivity
problems, or to allow the injection of scale inhibitors. During this workover period, oil
production will stop for five days. The oil production during these five days was calculated to be
0.005% of the OOIP, which is 7,585,582 bbls for the field considered in this study. Therefore, the
penalty is calculated as function of the produced alkaline concentration. It, then, relates to the pH
value, where the maximum alkaline concentration, 1.4 wt%, results in pH 11. The maximum
produced alkaline concentration, i.e. 1.4 %wt, corresponds to the worst case scenario, and so the
highest loss of oil production. A linear relationship is used to calculate the penalty for other produced
alkaline concentrations.

ASP flood design NPV

The NPV (Net Present Value) will be calculated for every flood design, which is vital to evaluate if
the project will be implanted or not; basically the key question is if the extra oil recovered from the
ASP will be enough to offset the expenditure. Assumptions made in this economic analysis to simplify
the economic model are as follows: The oil price is assumed to be $50 in-line with current oil
price, its value then was reduced by 10% to compensate for taxes and other associated costs. Constant
operating expenditure (Opex), related to chemicals injected is assumed. Finally, a constant inflation
rate of 3% and a constant discount rate of 10% is considered. The ASP chemicals costs, i.e. alkaline,
surfactant and polymer can be found in Table 1, which are intended to be indicative of the current
market price. The prices will vary according to location and market values and are based on the values
reported in the literature (Pope, 2011; Sheng, 2013).

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 $/kg $/lb
Alkaline 0.27 0.12
Surfactant 4.85 2.2
Polymer 3.30 1.5

Table 1 Price of chemicals.

Pareto Front

The optimum ASP flood will be the one that delivers the highest volume of produced oil, i.e. the highest
FOE. However, other constraints should be considered such as scale deposition risk, due to the injection
of alkali slug. While a higher chemical volume deployed will result in a higher volume of oil produced,
it might not be economically feasible. Therefore, there seems to be at least three conflicting objectives,
i.e. there might not be a single design that minimise scale risk deposition and maximises FOE and NPV.
In these circumstances, there exists a number of Pareto optimal flood designs that are not dominated by
any other design. A design flood D dominates another D, if all the objectives of D are equal or better
than D.

Parameter space

An ASP flood consist of the injection of a chemical slug containing alkaline, surfactant and polymer,
followed by a polymer slug, which normally is injected as a single cycle, see Figure 1 . The following
parameters can be used to describe an ASP flood design: number of cycles (N); CEOR fraction within
each cycle (; polymer post-flush fraction within each CEOR phase (); and finally, alkaline, surfactant
and polymer concentration.

Figure 1 ASP flood schematic.

Number of cycles

Normally the ASP flooding involves the injection of ASP slug followed by polymer and water, as one
cycle, which normally is about 60% of the pore volume. This parameter, N, explores the effect
of splitting the aforementioned cycle into a number of cycles, the rationale behind is that the
produced alkaline concentration could be somehow controlled by diluting with a water slug, but
keeping the positive effect of alkaline, and so reducing the scale deposition risk. The maximum
and minimum numbers of cycles have been fixed between 1 and 20.

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Lambda

Lambda determines the fraction of the CEOR in a cycle, i.e. [cycle] = [CEOR] + [water flooding],
where [CEOR] = [cycle], and [water flooding] = (1-[cycle], see Figure 2. The maximum and
minimum limits for of have been set to be 0 and 1.

Mu

is the duration of the polymer post-slug after ASP flood within the CEOR phase, i.e. [CEOR] = [ASP]
+ [polymer], where [ASP] = (1-*[CEOR] and [polymer] = *[CEOR], see Figure 2. The maximum
and minimum of have been set between to 0 and 1.

Figure 2 Cycle stages.

ASP chemical concentrations

The maximum alkaline, surfactant and polymer concentration are shown in Table 2. The values are the
average concentrations deployed in field applications, which were reported by Sheng in 2014.

wt %
Alkaline 1.4
Surfactant 0.37
Polymer 0.14

Table 2 Alkaline, Surfactant, Polymer maximum concentrations.

Field Study Case

A synthetic reservoir model was used to perform a number of optimization calculations using
a commercial reservoir simulator. A simple synthetic model was chosen to demonstrate the
optimisation technique as it allows for a large amount of permutations of the model to be run
within a short timeframe, and to allow for the use of generalised ASP chemical properties found in
the literature. The reservoir model is a 3-D (three dimensional) model that consists of 11x11x5 grid
cells in the X, Y and Z directions respectively. Oil, gas, water and the dissolved gas phases are
considered. The reservoir model is homogeneous, and it consists of five layers with the following
horizontal permeabilities: 23, 680, 680, 74 and 74 mD; the vertical to horizontal permeability
ratio is 0.12. The porosity of the reservoir is 0.288. The water and oil viscosities are 0.3cP and
12.5cP respectively.

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The model has one injector and one producer, the injection well is controlled by surface flow rate of
3,250 stb/day whereas the production well is controlled by liquid rate, set at 3,000 stb/day. The BHP
upper limit for the injector and the BHP lower limit for the producer have been set at 10,000 and 3,100
psi, respectively. The model represents a section of a conventional reservoir development, focusing on
the communication between injector and producer.

The effect of temperature and salinity is not explicitly simulated. Temperature is known to have a major
effect on the performance of the polymer viscosity by thermal degradation and hydrolysis, as well as
the adsorption characteristics. Salinity is an important aspect in ASP flooding, and in this study, it is
assumed that the optimal salinity will be maintained throughout the ASP flood. It could either be with
the optimal salinity gradient, (Hirasaki et al., 1983; Maerker and Gale, 1992), which will, of course,
have an impact on the project economics, although it has been employed before in field operations
(Maerker and Gale, 1992; Sharma et al., 2013; Al-Amrie et al., 2015; Levitt et al., 2016). Or
alternatively as an equally valid approach to use a constant salinity throughout the flood, with the
rationale being that the constant salinity lowers the water treatment costs, reduces operations concerns
and can reduce the risk of scale (Zakaria et al., 2016). To conclude, it is assumed that the reservoir
temperature and the optimum salinity will be taken into account to achieve the level of performance of
the chemicals described below.

Figure 3 Synthetic reservoir model.

ASP flood design

The goal is to identify the optimum ASP flood design where the total injected volume is approximately
60% of the reservoir pore volume, with an injection rate of 3,000bbls/day [it] will take approximately
2,000days. As mentioned before, the ASP flood designs will be determined by a number of cycles,
where each cycle consist of the ASP slug, a polymer post flush and water drive spacer. The duration of
any of the three phases of a cycle is taken to be a multiple of 10 days, i.e. the duration may be 0 days,
10 days, 20 days, etc. If the water drive spacer duration is less than 10 days, then the algorithm will
treat the design as a continuous injection, as the duration will be 0 days.

There are number of properties for the ASP chemicals, i.e. alkaline, surfactant and polymer, which need
to be described to simulate ASP flooding. The properties of each component is described below, the
data has been compiled from a variety of literature sources and is intended to provide a generalised

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dataset to demonstrate the optimisation technique proposed. Care should be taken since using specific
reservoir conditions and the corresponding chemical formulations will produce different outcomes.

Alkaline properties

When the alkaline is injected into the formation, it reacts with the acid component of the hydrocarbon
phase, as a result of the reaction, in-situ soap is generated which reduces water/oil surface tension which
is shown in Figure 8. The extent of surface tension reduction is a function of alkaline concentration,
shown in Figure 4, (Abadli, 2012).

Figure 4 Water/oil surface tension multipliers as a function of alkaline concentration

Another effect of alkaline that needs to be considered, it is that it reduces the polymer and surfactant
adsorption, as shown in Figure 5 and Figure 6, respectively.

Figure 5 Polymer adsorption multipliers as a function of alkaline concentration.

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Figure 6 Surfactant adsorption multipliers as a function of alkaline concentration.
However, alkaline also undergoes adsorption on the rock surface. Depending on the level of
adsorption, a greater alkaline quantity might be necessary to obtain the desired effect. The alkaline
adsorption on rock is shown in the Figure 7. Fortenberry and co-authors (Fortenberry et al., 2015)
reported an alkaline consumption of 0.75 mg per gram of rock.

Figure 7 Alkaline adsorption as a function of alkaline concentration.

Surfactant properties

The surfactant is injected into the formation to decrease the surface tension. As a result the capillary
number increases, which leads to lower residual oil saturation (Aveyard et al, 1984). The extent of
surface tension reduction is a function of surfactant concentration, as shown Figure 8. In addition, the
viscosity of water may increase as function of surfactant concentration, see Figure 9 (Alkhatib et al,
2013).

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Figure 8 Water/oil surface tension versus surfactant concentration.

Figure 9 Surfactant solution viscosity as a function of the surfactant concentration.

Similar to the alkaline, the surfactant adheres to the rock surface. Hence, during determination of the
quantity of the surfactant required to inject into the formation to reach defined oil recovery, the process
of the surfactant retention should be considered, see Figure 10. Fortenberry and co-authors (Fortenberry
et al., 2015) reported surfactant consumption up to 0.31 mg per gram of rock.

Figure 10 Surfactant adsorption as a function of the surfactant concentration.

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Polymer properties

Adsorption of the chemical on the rock is also the characteristic of the polymer. Fortenberry and co-
authors (Fortenberry et al., 2015) reported polymer consumption up to 0.01 mg per gram of rock, as
shown in Figure 11.

Figure 11 Polymer adsorption as a function of the polymer concentration.

The main polymer effect is the increase of the injection fluid viscosity, normally water. The injected
fluid viscosity increases as function of polymer concentration, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12 Polymer solution viscosity as a function of the polymer concentration.

Optimization Results Field Study Case

The optimum ASP design is the one that recovers the highest volume of oil, however it might not be the
most efficient one. As mentioned before, the higher volume of chemicals injected the higher the
recovery, but there is a key question about the feasibility and the associated risk of such a flood.
Therefore other objectives should be included for consideration, in addition to FOE: NPV and scale
deposition risk. There might not be a single flood design that optimise all the objectives, since the
objectives are conflicting, i.e. the highest FOE will not necessarily achieve the highest NPV, and
consequently the lowest scale deposition risk. Thus, a number of Pareto optimal ASP flood designs
exist. The Pareto front of the suggested designs is calculated and shown below, which can be used to
easily identify the most efficient flood design. Figure 15 shows the ASP designs suggested by the

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optimising algorithm, which includes the Pareto front depicted in a solid black line, considering Net
FOE and Total Chemical injected (the total mass of alkaline, surfactant and polymer); in addition each
design is colour matched. Figure 15 shows the Pareto front considering Net FOE and injected alkalinity
concentration. These two graphs are very illustrative of the ASP design flood efficiency, interesting is
the fact that NPV does not correlate linearly with the total chemical injected, the same NPV value may
be achievable with a range of volume of ASP chemicals, as shown in Figure 13, in particular with three
times less total chemical the same NPV was achieved. It is generally recommended to inject the lowest
possible volume of chemical or in this particular case, the lowest possible concentration to prevent
chemical incompatibilities and injectivity problems. In addition, from a logistical point of view it is
desirable to mobilise the lowest chemical volume possible. Error! Reference source not found. Table
3 shows the Pareto ASP designs ordered by highest NPV, which may be used to identify the most
efficient ASP flood design for a particular scenario.

Figure 13 NPV versus Total mass of ASP chemical injected from the Pareto front.

In the 5 year period studied, the algorithm suggests the optimal ASP design would consist of between
10 and 15 alternating cycles of ASP and drive fluid. However, the water or polymer drive duration is
calculated to be 10 days or less for the highest ranking ASP designs; as such, these values were
discounted by the algorithm as it was felt that any process that was less than 10 days of injection would
not be practical in real field scenarios. The optimisation takes this minimum duration into account and
if the design has an injection stage of less than 10 days then that stage is not performed. Thus, if a design
has a water or polymer drive of less than 10 days, the design is treated as a continuous injection and the
respective FOE and NPV is that of a continuous injection.

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Figure 14 Optimisation results Net FOE versus Total Chemical Injected.

Figure 15 Optimisation results Net FOE versus Alkaline injected concentration.

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24-27 April 2017, Stavanger, Norway
 Poly
Water
Post Total
drive ASP Alk Surf Poly Net NPV
Design N flush ASP
() [days] [wt%] [wt%] [wt%] FOE [MM$]
() [Kg]
[days]
[days]
1 15 0 0 130 0.34 0.37 0.05 0.39 87.30 5.0E+5
2 14 10 0 130 0.14 0.37 0.05 0.38 87.29 3.8E+5
3 15 0 0 130 1.05 0.37 0.11 0.43 86.53 9.4E+5
4 15 0 0 130 0.99 0.37 0.09 0.42 86.48 8.8E+5
5 18 10 0 100 1.10 0.37 0.09 0.42 86.06 7.7E+5
6 20 10 0 90 0.94 0.37 0.07 0.41 86.05 5.9E+5
7 6 10 0 320 1.34 0.37 0.14 0.44 85.76 2.8E+6
8 11 0 0 180 1.22 0.37 0.10 0.43 85.68 1.6E+6
9 18 0 0 110 0.11 0.37 0.01 0.37 85.55 2.5E+5
10 4 30 0 460 1.43 0.37 0.14 0.44 85.50 4.4E+6
11 5 10 0 420 1.41 0.37 0.13 0.44 85.35 4.3E+6
12 5 10 0 390 1.43 0.37 0.12 0.44 85.29 4.3E+6
13 7 10 0 270 1.37 0.37 0.10 0.43 85.28 2.3E+6
14 5 0 0 400 1.40 0.37 0.14 0.44 85.19 4.4E+6
15 3 0 0 650 1.42 0.37 0.14 0.45 85.10 6.0E+6
16 1 30 0 1940 1.43 0.37 0.14 0.45 85.09 1.8E+7
17 1 20 0 1950 1.43 0.37 0.14 0.45 85.07 1.8E+7
18 1 30 0 1950 1.43 0.37 0.14 0.45 85.07 1.8E+7
19 1 10 0 1980 1.43 0.37 0.14 0.45 85.07 1.8E+7
20 1 10 0 1980 1.43 0.37 0.14 0.45 85.07 1.8E+7
21 1 30 0 1920 1.43 0.37 0.14 0.45 85.07 1.8E+7
22 3 0 0 670 1.43 0.37 0.14 0.45 85.07 9.0E+6
23 4 0 0 570 1.43 0.37 0.14 0.45 85.07 6.0E+6
24 19 10 10 90 0.50 0.37 0.02 0.37 84.42 3.7E+5
25 18 0 0 110 0.69 0.37 0.02 0.39 84.30 5.7E+5
26 18 0 0 110 0.70 0.37 0.01 0.39 84.25 5.8E+5
27 18 0 0 110 0.80 0.37 0.01 0.39 83.76 5.9E+5
28 20 10 0 90 0.78 0.35 0.01 0.38 82.97 5.0E+5
29 20 20 20 70 0.29 0.36 0.02 0.34 81.56 2.2E+5
30 17 50 10 60 0.39 0.36 0.02 0.32 78.56 2.1E+5
31 20 50 10 40 0.79 0.30 0.00 0.28 68.27 2.1E+5
32 18 60 10 50 0.32 0.21 0.04 0.24 62.23 1.4E+5
33 20 60 10 30 0.84 0.30 0.03 0.24 61.06 1.9E+5
34 18 100 0 10 0.79 0.33 0.13 0.22 58.73 7.6E+4
35 7 140 120 20 0.16 0.14 0.02 0.21 58.43 4.3E+4
36 17 50 70 0 0.79 0.25 0.01 0.20 58.21 1.8E+3
37 7 140 130 10 0.00 0.34 0.01 0.21 58.03 1.3E+4
38 20 100 0 0 0.33 0.02 0.04 0.20 56.37 5.9E+2

Table 3 Pareto Front ASP designs considering Net FOE and Total Chemical Injected.

The two highest ranking ASP designs show two different injection strategies: Design 1, continuous
injection; Design 2, cycles of ASP slugs with short duration water spacers. By employing cycling

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24-27 April 2017, Stavanger, Norway
ASP/water slugs, the total volume of injected chemicals is lowered and in this instance, this is the key
driver for the close economic performance of Designs 1 & 2. Design 2 will produce less oil in total, but
the savings in injected chemicals will balance out the NPV. While the injected Alkali is lower in Design
2, this is not in itself a key economic consideration as it is a relatively cheap chemical; the reduction in
scale potential and the associated costs are far more significant in this scenario.

Conclusions

Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm, which is a population based stochastic algorithm, has been
applied to find the most efficient ASP flood design for a synthetic reservoir model describing the
communication between an injector and producer, where the objective function considered the risk of
scale deposition. The optimization considered the scale risk deposition commonly occurring in ASP
flooded reservoirs, in addition, the NPV for every design was calculated.

The optimum ASP design is the one which recovers the highest volume of oil, however it might not be
the most efficient, if NPV and scale risk deposition is taken into account. Since these objectives are
conflicting there exists a number of non-dominated designs, which form the Pareto front. The Pareto
front was calculated considering Net FOE, which accounts for the penalty due to scale deposition and
the total mass for ASP chemicals injected. The optimisation results suggest the possibility to achieve
the same NPV value with the minimum volume of chemicals necessary, as shown in Table 3, the
injection of chemicals in design 1 was significantly lower than design 2.

The two highest ranking ASP designs represent two different injection strategies constant injection
and cycling ASP/water slugs. Both designs produced very similar NPV values and while a constant
injection produced a high NPV, it could be seen that in order to reduce risk associated with the project
an injection strategy with a lower volume of injected chemicals could be preferable. These results will,
of course, depend on the field in question, along with chemical performance, chemical cost and oil
price.

The Pareto fronts were shown graphically, where each suggested design was color matched against
NPV value. This plotting technique is extremely useful to identify the most efficient design. Also, a
table with the non-dominated designs part of the Pareto front was included, which is significantly useful
to identify the general characteristics of the most efficient designs.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Flow Assurance and Scale Team (FAST) at Heriot Watt University
for their support. Foundation CMG is thanked for funding the chair in Reactive Flow Simulation at
Heriot-Watt University held by Eric Mackay. Schlumberger for the use of ECLIPSE. Heriot-Watt
University is thanked for permission to publish this paper.

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