Alkalinity as carbonate and bicarbonate of saline water is very important in chemical waterflooding or tertiary recovery processes for recovering petroleum. Alkaline waters offer better wetting to the formation rock and improve oil release. As an additional benefit, ions that provide alkalinity adsorb on rock surfaces occupying adsorption sites and decrease the loss of recovery chemical by adsorption. Determination of alkalinity in waters used in tertiary recovery processes is therefore very important.

An alkalinity value is necessary in the calculation of carbonate scaling tendencies of saline waters. It is also necessary to determine the alkalinity if the ionic balance of a water analysis is to be used as a check of the reliability of the analysis.