Inter-well chemical tracers are a valuable tool in the management of hydrocarbon reservoirs that can give insight into the connectivity of well pairs and the propagation of water-flooding underground. However, tracers are underutilized due to the expense and challenges associated with trace-level detection and quantification in unclean produced fluids, which requires hazardous chemical derivatization steps for GC-MS quantification.<br/>Two dimensional liquid chromatography (2D-LC) is emerging as a powerful analytical tool offering hundreds of times greater separation capability than traditional one dimensional LC, making it a good choice for analysis of fluids produced from hydrocarbon reservoirs due to the high complexity of matrix present in the produced water. By using valves to capture portions of HPLC effluent in capillary loops (known as “heart-cutting”) the peaks of interest can be injected onto a second column of different chemical selectivity in order to resolve the co-eluted compounds from the first separation.<br/>Here, we demonstrate successful development of a method to separate three inter-well molecular tracers, which were discussed in previous work, from oil reservoir produced water. By combining 2D-LC with the previously-reported sheathed lanthanide emitter (SLE) time-resolved fluorescence detection, we have achieved detection limits for these samples as low as 100 ppt level with minimal sample work-up. This makes 2D-LC attractive as an alternative to the more GC-MS techniques for traditional tracer analysis by eliminating hazardous derivatization steps and manual sample processing. Due to the liquid-phase analysis, 2D-LC also enables a broader range of molecules to be detected compared with GC-MS and has the potential for near-wellsite deployment.

Improved detection of oil field tracers from produced fluids using 2D liquid chromatography

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

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ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.