“Schmoo” is the smelly, black goo found coating the inside of produced water piping at the Prudhoe Bay oil field, it is essentially oil-coated particulate of iron sulfide. Layers more than 1“ thick have been found in some injection well lines. Schmoo causes several significant problems: It can plug injection wells, requiring expensive well work to unplug the wells. Worse, colonies of bacteria grow under heavy layers of schmoo, corroding pits in the pipe, and necessitating very expensive repairs. These problems prompted the development of a novel dispersant to remove the schrnoo. The novel dispersant consists of two nonionic surfactants - an alkyl polyglycoside and a linear alkyl ethoxylate -
dissolved in an aqueous solution of sodium hydroxide. Field tests of the dispersant were very successfid, and treatment of water injection wells with the dispersant was adopted as standard practice: 28 water injection wells have now been treated successfully, preventing well plugging, and in many cases, improving injectivities. Other applications, such as cleaning vessels and removing formation damage in production wells, are currently being explored.
Keywords: Organic/inorganic scale, schmoo, alkyl polyglycoside, nonionic surfactant, dispersant, corrosion, produced water, infectivity.