Output details
15 - General Engineering
Heriot-Watt University (joint submission with University of Edinburgh)
Environmental-Scanning-Electron-Microscope investigation into the effect of biofilm on the wettability of quartz
This paper presents the novel application of the unique features of an environmental scanning microscope (ESEM) to evaluate the wettability of surfaces to water, important in oil recovery predictions. The current practise of evaluating recovered reservoir rock properties ignores the impact of possible microbial contamination on rock fluid transport properties. This paper presents novel wettability results, using the ESEM, of the microbial contamination of quartz, where wettability changed from hydrophilic to hydrophobic. This significant result has been acknowledged by the international rock wettability research community exemplified by Armstrong’s recent microbial enhanced oil recovery paper (DOI:10.1007/s11242-011-9934-3).