ArticleScientific reports2015
The effect of ionic strength on oil adhesion in sandstone--the search for the low salinity mechanism.
Article in Scientific reports, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 141 citations in OpenAlex.
- Experimental study on the simultaneous effect of smart water and clay particles on the stability of asphaltene molecule and emulsion phase.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Application of Low-Salinity Waterflooding in Heavy Oil Sandstone Reservoir: Oil Recovery Efficiency and Mechanistic Study.ACS omega · 2024Article
- Investigation of crude oil properties impact on wettability alteration during low salinity water flooding using an improved geochemical model.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Analysis of streaming potential flow and electroviscous effect in a shear-driven charged slit microchannel.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Oil Contact Angles in a Water-Decane-Silicon Dioxide System: Effects of Surface Charge.Nanoscale research letters · 2018Article
- Optical characterization of surface adlayers and their compositional demixing at the nanoscale.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Calcium-Mediated Adhesion of Nanomaterials in Reservoir Fluids.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Organic-Silica Interactions in Saline: Elucidating the Structural Influence of Calcium in Low-Salinity Enhanced Oil Recovery.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Salinity-Dependent Contact Angle Alteration in Oil/Brine/Silicate Systems: the Critical Role of Divalent Cations.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2017Article
- Zeta potential in oil-water-carbonate systems and its impact on oil recovery during controlled salinity water-flooding.Scientific reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Core flood and field tests have demonstrated that decreasing injection water salinity increases oil recovery from sandstone reservoirs. However, the microscopic mechanism behind the effect is still under debate. One hypothesis is that as salinity decreases, expansion of the electrical double layer decreases attraction between organic molecules and pore surfaces. We have developed a method that uses atomic force microscopy (AFM) in chemical force mapping (CFM) mode to explore the relationship between wettability and salinity. We functionalised AFM tips with alkanes and used them to represent tiny nonpolar oil droplets. In repeated measurements, we brought our "oil" close to the surface of sand grains taken from core plugs and we measured the adhesion between the tip and sample. Adhesion was constant in high salinity solutions but below a threshold of 5,000 to 8,000 ppm, adhesion decreased as salinity decreased, rendering the surface less oil wet. The effect was consistent, reproducible and reversible. The threshold for the onset of low salinity response fits remarkably well with observations from core plug experiments and field tests. The results demonstrate that the electric double layer force always contributes at least in part to the low salinity effect, decreasing oil wettability when salinity is low.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.