Sandstone Acidizing Using a Low-Reaction Acid System

Abstract

Sandstone acidizing is the process of removing the damage from sandstone reservoirs to restore the well productivity/injectivity to its original or expected rates. It differs from carbonate acidizing in which a substantial portion of the rock is dissolved. Stimulating sandstone with mud acid HF/HCl may cause many problems as sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock that consists mainly of quartz, silica minerals, feldspars, clays, and minor quantities of zeolite and chlorites. When conventional mud acid reacts with rock some sensitive components of sandstone get cemented by silica, calcite, or iron oxides. This happens due to the different precipitation reactions that take place and form fluosilicates, calcium fluorides, silica-gel filming, and even colloidal silica-gel compounds. In this work, two chelating agents, hydroxyethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (HEDTA) and diethylenetriaminepentaacetic acid (DTPA), were used to stimulate Berea sandstone cores. Berea sandstone cores were scanned using the XRD to quantify their mineralogical composition. Different pore volumes of 0.6M HEDTA and 0.6M DTPA were used as a preflush followed by different concentrations of HF as a main flush. For the post-flush stage, ammonium chloride was used to flow back the cores and measure their permeability. The levels of calcium, magnesium, aluminum, and iron ions in the effluent samples were measured using inductively coupled plasma (ICP) to assess the ability of each chemical to leach these different ions. Both HEDTA and DTPA showed a strong capability of chelating calcium, iron, and magnesium ions from the sandstone cores while the amounts of chelated aluminum ions were quite small. Once starting the injection of the used chelating agents, the permeability of the core got enhanced gradually. The higher amounts of the chelating agents resulted in better the cores permeability. However, DTPA showed a better permeability enhancement than HEDTA due to its stronger ability to chelate the calcium, iron, magnesium, and aluminum ions. Adding HF as the main flush initiates different reactions with the clay and silica minerals of the Berea sandstone cores. This caused a reduction in the permeability due to the formation of some precipitates such as fluosilicates and calcium fluorides. Therefore, it is recommended to use a very low concentration of HF while treating the Berea sandstone.