Study of Surface Wettability of Mineral Rock Particles by an Improved Washburn Method

The surface wettability of rocks in underground reservoirs affects the distribution of fluids in the reservoir, so the wettability of reservoir minerals is a key factor for crude oil recovery from reservoirs. In this paper, the wettability of quartz sand with different particle sizes in different polar solvents was determined by Washburn's capillary rise method, and the C·cos θ values were calculated first. Next, the experimentally obtained macroscopic contact angle of water on the quartz surface of 15.0° was substituted into C·cos θ to obtain a linear equation between the particle size of quartz sand and the capillary constant C. The particle sizes of oil sand and mineral powder were then substituted into the equation to obtain their capillary constants C. Then, based on the Owens-Wendt-Rabel-Kaelbe (OWRK) equation and the obtained contact angles of solvent on quartz sand, oil sand, and mineral powder, the surface free energy of quartz sand with different particle sizes is calculated as 76.09, 76.65, and 76.42 mN/m, respectively, which are close to the literature results. In addition, the surface free energy of oil sand with different particle sizes was 23.22, 23.45, and 23.63 mN/m, and the results indicated that the polarity of oil sand was low. Meanwhile, the surface free energies of kaolinite, illite, feldspar, and montmorillonite were 61.59, 32.85, 35.87, and 25.91 mN/m, respectively. By the improved Washburn method in this paper, the wettability of different solvents on the surface of reservoir rocks was investigated, and the surface free energy of specific solid particles was calculated, which is important for studying the extraction of crude oil from subsurface reservoir rocks.