Water incompatibility in carbonate reservoirs: mechanisms, mitigation, and emerging innovations for sustainable water injection

Water incompatibility in carbonate reservoirs remains a major challenge affecting injectivity, production performance, and long-term reservoir sustainability during water injection operations. Interactions among injected brines, formation water, and reactive carbonate minerals can trigger geochemical and flow-related problems, including mineral scaling, wettability alteration, fines migration, and reservoir souring. Unlike previous reviews that primarily focus on isolated mechanisms or individual mitigation methods, this study provides an integrated assessment linking fundamental geochemical processes, laboratory and field evidence, predictive modeling approaches, mitigation technologies, and emerging sustainability-oriented innovations within a unified framework for carbonate reservoirs. Particular emphasis is placed on the integration of reactive transport simulations, artificial intelligence-assisted prediction models, smart water injection, nanotechnology-based inhibitors, and digital monitoring systems for proactive incompatibility management. The review also critically examines current limitations associated with thermodynamic uncertainty, scale-up from laboratory to field conditions, and the insufficient understanding of coupled multi-ion interactions under dynamic reservoir environments. Emerging applications related to carbon capture, utilization, and storage and underground hydrogen storage are evaluated in the context of future low-carbon reservoir management strategies. Key conclusions highlight that conventional empirical scaling indices are insufficient, reactive transport simulators improve predictive capability but face field-scale limitations, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence offer transformative potential but require further validation, and sustainability-driven water management demands integrated approaches combining circular water use, green chemistry, and environmental, social, and governance compliance. Overall, this review emphasizes the transition from conventional reactive treatment approaches toward predictive, adaptive, and sustainability-driven water management frameworks for carbonate reservoirs.