Study and review of formation and removal of scale in oil recovery process

Today, due to increasing of economic efficiency and decreasing of natural depletion of crude oil, methods of enhanced oil recovery are widely used to create sustainable mobility in oil flows. One of the main problem arises during this process, is the scale formation in the reservoir hydrocarbon production and installations. For this reason in this study the formation of scale during oil recovery operations was reviewed. The results of this study showed that the injection of water, gas and chemical oil recovery can cause the minerals (scale) deposit on the surface and subsurface facilities under specific conditions of temperature and pressure. The methods for the removal of scale deposits were also studied in this work. The results confirmed that chemical, mechanical and combinatorial (mechanical and chemical) methods were effective to remove the deposited scale. The process efficiency was depended on the location and physical properties of the formed scale.