Acidizing of conventional and tight sandstone formation using chelating agents: mineralogical prospect

Abstract

Stimulation of the sandstone reservoir requires a mixture of acids such as mud acid, which assist in enlarging the microscopic paths by dissolving the siliceous fines or clays near the well-bore region. As a result, the formation permeability and porosity can be enhanced. In deeper wells, the temperature exceeds 200 °F, at these temperature ranges, problems can arise. For example, the use of mud acid mixtures can lead to issues like precipitations, corrosion, early consumption of acids, leading to lesser acid efficiency. In this study, the core flooding apparatus was used for acidizing experiments, designed to dissolve minerals and to analyze the changes in petrophysical parameters such as porosity, permeability, and mineralogy. Conventional and tight sandstone core samples were acidized using different chelating acids such as Hydroxyethylethylenediaminetriacetic acid (HEDTA), Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) and Glutamic acid (GLDA) at high-temperature conditions. Analytical studies (mineral mass, pore size distribution, topology, grain size distribution, and density distribution were conducted using Tescan Integrated Mineral Analysis (TIMA). The obtained results showed that chelating agent HEDTA created more pore spaces in the core samples and is effective in dissolving positive ions. Also, the permeability was observed to be doubled by its application which could be effective in alteration of pore topology of the sandstone cores.