Masoumeh Eghtesad - EOR Research Center, School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
Shahab Ayatollahi - EOR Research Center, School of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering

Wettability is one of the major factors that influence oil recovery in reservoir rock. It describes the relative preference of a rock to be covered by acertain phase of fluid. Water wet rocks have more affinity for water than for oil whereas oil wet rocks have more affinity towards oil than water. Wettability is often described by a contact angle formed at the solid-oil-water contact line. For contact angles less than 60 the solid is oil wet and if the contact angles above 120 the solid is water wet and in between it is intermediate wet. If the wettability is altered to an intermediate degree about 90 it results in an infinitely large capillary number thereby resulting in very high oil recoveries. Electrowetting is the phenomenon of contact angle decrease under the influence of an external voltage applied across the solid/liquid interface. In this paper we study the capability of reservoir rocks to change their wettability under the influence of an external voltage. Experimental results show that reservoir rocks are able to change their wettability under the influence of an external force; likely the contact angle changed from an initial value to a saturated value that is lower than the initial contact angle

Electrowetting, wettability alteration, contact Angle, Plexiglas surface, CarbonateReservoir Electrowetting