Mapping Effective Corrosion Inhibitor Dose in a Large Onshore Oilfield

摘要

Surfactant-based corrosion inhibitors are widely used in oilfield production systems. Ensuring that an appropriate dosage of inhibitor is present throughout a variable production network is very challenging and can present a serious risk in asset integrity. Using micelle detection for diagnosis of the presence of an adequate inhibitor dose has been demonstrated as a method which avoids some of the difficulties and potential inaccuracies of residual measurement whilst still providing a rapid measurement of functional dose content. In this study it was applied to the analysis of spot samples taken across a large onshore production system encompassing three different corrosion inhibitors in two nearby fields and a water injection system serving both. The results were quite different across the three systems. The larger onshore system was found to contain micelles in very few samples and showed that more performance could be sought by increasing dosage, the smaller production system contained micelles throughout indicating the possibility of decreasing dosage if required and the water injection system showed a depletion of micelles across the length of the system with some sub-optimal dosage towards the terminus.