Effects of the Reservoir Environment and Oilfield Operations on the Iron Mineral Surface Charge Development: An Insight into Their Role in Wettability Alteration

Iron minerals are hydrophobic minerals predominately found in sandstone formations with their role in wettability alteration not fully understood. With the reservoir rock being a complex system of multiple minerals, the control of wettability alterations becomes difficult to manage due to the different surface chemistry of constituent minerals. This study presents for the first time the surface charge development of pyrite, magnetite, and hematite minerals in native reservoir environments and the effect of oilfield operations such as acidizing, water injection, polymerization, surfactant flooding, and alkaline flooding on iron minerals, surface charge development. This was achieved using zeta potential measurement, which depicts the type of surface charge and infers the propensity of precipitation. The experimental results show that pyrite, magnetite, and hematite behave similarly under reservoir conditions with all the minerals being positively charged although pyrite and hematite are negatively charged in seawater (SW). Results also show that the surface charge development is controlled by the electrical double-layer effect and ion adsorption on the mineral surfaces. These findings provide key insights into the role of iron minerals in wettability alteration as they provide surfaces that serve as a precursor for polar crude component adsorption. Also, the design of an ion-engineered fluid to control the surface charge of iron minerals was implemented, and the results showed that they behave differently. Furthermore, the effect of low-salinity water on the mineral surface charge was examined. The findings revealed that low-salinity water can produce a negatively charged surface, however, cannot mitigate the iron mineral precipitation challenge as the observed zeta potential values are near zero. Finally, slug and continuous injection of the ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid chelating agent was implemented as an iron mineral precipitation control strategy, with the continuous injection observed to significantly improve the colloidal stability of the iron minerals in the reservoir native state and after SW injection.