The Importance of Inhibitor Analysis in Scale Management--An Overview
–Journal of Petroleum Technology
The accurate and precise analysis of scale inhibitors--in conjunction with other field data such as ion analysis, total suspended solids, and productivity index--plays an important role in making decisions about the efficiency of scale squeeze and continuous chemical injection treatments. This paper presents a review of scale-inhibitor analysis techniques and describes how these techniques can be used to provide cost-effective scale management in simple and complex production scenarios. This overview of scale-inhibitor detection methods is based on a database of analytical techniques previously developed through a joint industry project and expanded to cover alternative approaches and recent developments in high-performance liquid chromatography, recently developed C18 ion pair approaches, improved benchtop polymer analysis for sulfonated polymers, and more recent methods such as time-resolved fluorescence (TRF) and other fluorescence-based approaches. The premise of this paper is that, although various methods are available for scale-inhibitor analysis, most are affected by interference of some degree and that, while a preferred method may be sensitive and accurate under a particular set of conditions, it is unlikely to be effective in all production environments. The scale-inhibitor analyst, therefore, requires a large toolbox of alternative approaches that can supplement original methodologies.
Journal of Petroleum Technology
February, 2017
- Genre:
- Overview (0.89)
- Industry:
- Energy > Oil & Gas
- Upstream (1.00)
- Materials > Chemicals (1.00)
- Water & Waste Management > Water Management (1.00)
- Energy > Oil & Gas