Experimental Investigation of Stability of Silica Nanoparticles at Reservoir Conditions for Enhanced Oil-Recovery Applications (original) (raw)
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Egyptian Journal of Petroleum, 2013
The role of nanoparticles in enhancing oil recovery from oil reservoirs is an increasingly important topic of research. Nanoparticles have the properties that are potentially useful for enhanced oil recovery processes, as they are solid and two orders of magnitude smaller than colloidal particles. This paper presents a comparison between the efficiency of modified silica nanoparticles in enhancing oil recovery from two different Iranian light and intermediate oil reservoirs. The mechanisms used to recover additional oil would be oil-water interfacial tension reduction and wettability alteration. Oil phase contact angles and oil-water interfacial tensions were measured in the absence and the presence of nano fluids' different concentrations (1-4 g/L). Results showed that the interfacial tension reduces dramatically in the presence of nanoparticles for both light and intermediate oil. In addition oil phase contact angle results showed a transformation of rock wettability from water-wet toward oil-wet condition. However, these nanoparticles are more capable in the reduction of the interfacial tension and the alteration of wettability in the case of light oil reservoir. A comparison between recovery results indicated that these nanoparticles are more efficient in light oil reservoirs and produce more incremental amount of oil after primary and secondary processes.
Enhancing Oil Recovery with Hydrophilic Polymer-Coated Silica Nanoparticles
Energies, 2020
Nanoparticles (NPs) have been proposed for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The research has demonstrated marvelous effort to realize the mechanisms of nanoparticles EOR. Nevertheless, gaps still exist in terms of understanding the nanoparticles-driven interactions occurring at fluids and fluid-rock interfaces. Surface-active polymers or other surface additive materials (e.g., surfactants) have shown to be effective in aiding the dispersion stability of NPs, stabilizing emulsions, and reducing the trapping or retention of NPs in porous media. These prerequisites , together with the interfacial chemistry between the NPs and the reservoir and its constituents, can result in an improved sweep efficiency. This paper investigates four types of polymer-coated silica NPs for the recovery of oil from water-wet Berea sandstones. A series of flooding experiments was carried out with NPs dispersed at 0.1 wt.% in seawater in secondary and tertiary oil recovery modes at ambient conditions. The dynamic interactions of fluids, fluid-rock, and the transport behavior of injected fluid in the presence of NPs were, respectively, studied by interfacial tension (IFT), spontaneous imbibition tests, and a differential pressure analysis. Core flooding results showed an increase in oil recovery up to 14.8% with secondary nanofluid injection compared to 39.7% of the original oil in place (OOIP) from the conventional waterflood. In tertiary mode, nanofluids increased oil recovery up to 9.2% of the OOIP. It was found that no single mechanism could account for the EOR effect with the application of nanoparticles. Instead, the mobilization of oil seemed to occur through a combination of reduced oil/water IFT, change in the rock surface roughness and wettability, and microscopic flow diversion due to clogging of the pores.
Journal of Molecular Liquids, 2019
A large number of core-flooding and micromodel experiments have examined the potential of nanoparticles to increase oil recovery. The mechanism of enhanced oil recovery using nanoparticles (nanoparticles-EOR) is still unclear. Nanoparticles may aid enhanced oil recovery because they may alter rock wettability and possibly reduce oil-water interfacial tension (IFT). The effect of nanoparticles on the oil-water IFT is controversial, as some have found that nanoparticles reduce IFT and others have illustrated that they have no significant effect. Nanoparticles' attachment at the oil-water interface, which causes IFT reduction is complex and bulk fluids properties (water and oil) directly affect their self-assembly. Fully understanding the driving forces causing self-assembly of nanoparticles at the oil-water interface and its controlling parameters are crucial for determining the effect of nanoparticles on IFT. In this research, by investigating the controlling parameters of nanoparticle attachment at the interface (bulk suspension properties including the concentration of nanoparticles, concentration of HCl, salinity, size and charge of nanoparticles, and operating conditions i.e. temperature and pressure), and coupling them with nanoparticles' stability in solution, the conditions under which silica nanoparticles can reduce oil-water interfacial tension are experimentally investigated. The results reveal that by appropriately designing the operating conditions, H +-protected silica nanoparticles can reduce the oil-water IFT. The maximum reduction of the oil-water IFT was obtained for 0.20 wt% silica nanoparticles in a solution containing 0.025 wt% HCl and 0.15 wt% nanoparticles in 0.0076 wt% HCl, where the IFT was reduced from 23.56 ± 0.36 mN/m to 12.81 ± 0.77 mN/m and from 22.61 ± 0.41 mN/m to 14.01 ± 0.87 mN/m, respectively. However, the minimum IFT reduction occurs when the surface energy reduction due to the adsorption of nanoparticles is minimal, i.e. the chance of nanoparticles to desorb from the interface due to thermal fluctuations is high, and nanoparticles' aggregation on the bulk surface is initiating.
Day 1 Tue, May 14, 2019, 2019
Lack of relevant screening methods of oil recovery techniques for water flood with added nanoparticles in a given reservoir are hindering its implementation for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) purposes. Moreover, the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of oil increased by nanoparticles must be improved. In this work, we screened twenty-three different types of silica nanoparticles as additives to injection water for oil recovery applications. The nanoparticles were surface functionalised to remain stable in the injection water and be active at the surface. The hypothesis is that the particles will improve the microscopic oil recovery efficiency of water flood in an oil reservoir. The concentrated solution of nanoparticles were prepared to 0.1 wt % concentration in synthetic North Sea water. Crude oil was obtained from a field in the North Sea. The following investigations were carried out to quickly verify the performance of nanoparticle oil recovery: 1) secondary injection throu...
Chemistry of the injected water has been investigated as an important parameter to improve/enhance oil recovery (IOR/EOR). Numerous extensive experiments have observed that water chemistry, such as ionic composition and salinity, can be modified for IOR/EOR purposes. However, the possible oil displacement mechanism remains debatable. Nanoparticle recently becomes more popular that have shown a great potential for IOR/EOR purposes in lab-scale, where in most experiments, waterbased fluid were used as dispersed fluid. As yet, there has been no discussion in the literature on the study of water chemistry on enhanced oil recovery using silica-based nanoparticles. A broad range of laboratory studies involving rock, nanoparticles and fluid characterization; fluidfluid and fluid-rock interactions; surface conductivity measurement; coreflood experiment; injection strategy formulation; filtration mechanism and contact angle measurement are conducted to investigate the impact of water chemistry, such as water salinity and ionic composition including hardness cations, on the performance of silicabased nanoparticles in IOR/EOR process and reveal possible displacement mechanism. The experimental results demonstrated that water salinity and ionic composition significantly impacted oil recovery using hydrophilic silica-based nanoparticles and that the oil recovery increased with the salinity. The primary findings from this study are that the water salinity, the ionic composition and the injection strategy are important parameters to be considered in Nano-EOR.
Experimental Investigation of Polymer-Coated Silica Nanoparticles for Enhanced Oil Recovery
Nanomaterials, 2019
Recently, polymer-coated nanoparticles were proposed for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) due to their improved properties such as solubility, stability, stabilization of emulsions and low particle retention on the rock surface. This work investigated the potential of various polymer-coated silica nanoparticles (PSiNPs) as additives to the injection seawater for oil recovery. Secondary and tertiary core flooding experiments were carried out with neutral-wet Berea sandstone at ambient conditions. Oil recovery parameters of nanoparticles such as interfacial tension (IFT) reduction, wettability alteration and log-jamming effect were investigated. Crude oil from the North Sea field was used. The concentrated solutions of PSiNPs were diluted to 0.1 wt % in synthetic seawater. Experimental results show that PSiNPs can improve water flood oil recovery efficiency. Secondary recoveries of nanofluid ranged from 60% to 72% of original oil in place (OOIP) compared to 56% OOIP achieved by reference water flood. In tertiary recovery mode, the incremental oil recovery varied from 2.6% to 5.2% OOIP. The IFT between oil and water was reduced in the presence of PSiNPs from 10.6 to 2.5-6.8 mN/m, which had minor effect on EOR. Permeability measurements indicated negligible particle retention within the core, consistent with the low differential pressure observed throughout nanofluid flooding. Amott-Harvey tests indicated wettability alteration from neutral-to water-wet condition. The overall findings suggest that PSiNPs have more potential as secondary EOR agents than tertiary agents, and the main recovery mechanism was found to be wettability alteration.
Experimental investigation of surface-functionalised silica nanoparticles for enhanced oil recovery
2020
Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) using nanoparticles (NPs) has been proposed as a solution in the petroleum industry to overcome declining production rates. Research has shown that commercially available hydrophilic silica NPs, manufactured by Evonik Industries, as additives to water flood can increase oil production from oil reservoirs. However, recent advances show that surface modification can further improve the microscopic sweep efficiency of NPs due to improved solubility and stability, greater stabilisation of emulsions, and low retention on porous medium compared with bare nanoparticles. The hypothesis above was the initiation of the present project. Evonik Industries developed twenty-three different types of silica nanoparticles with surface functionalities for oil recovery applications. The NPs were supplied to us as special research and development products under the name AERODISP®, or more precisely AEROSIL® particles in liquid solution. Twenty-three unique glass micromodel i...
SPE Reservoir Characterization and Simulation Conference and Exhibition, 2013
Align with current dynamic technology development, waterflooding techniques have been improved and optimized to have better oil recovery performance. In addition the latest worldwide industries innovation trends are miniaturization and nanotechnology materials such as nanoparticles. Hence one of the ideas is using nanoparticles to assist waterflood performance. However it is crucial to have a clear depiction of some parameters that may influences displacement process. The focus of this study is to investigate the effects of some parameters influencing oil recovery process due to nanoparticles such as particle size, rock permeability, initial rock wettability, injection rate and temperature. This study is part of our ongoing research in developing nanofluids for future or alternative enhanced oil recovery (Nano-EOR) method. Three different sizes of hydrophilic silica nanoparticles with single particle diameter range from 7 to 40 nm were employed and have been characterized under scan...
Petroleum Science, 2019
Recently, nanoparticles have proven to enhance oil recovery on the core-flood scale in challenging high-pressure high-temperature reservoirs. Nanomaterials generally appear to improve oil production through wettability alteration and reduction in interfacial tension between oil and water phases. Besides, they are environmentally friendly and cost-effective enhanced oil recovery techniques. Studying the rheological properties of nanoparticles is critical for field applications. The instability of nanoparticle dispersion due to aggregation is considered as an unfavorable phenomenon in nanofluid flooding while conducting an EOR process. In this study, wettability behavior and rheological properties of surface-treated silica nanoparticles using internal olefins sulfonates (IOS20–24 and IOS19–23), anionic surfactants were investigated. Surface modification effect on the stability of the colloidal solution in porous media and oil recovery was inspected. The rheology of pure and surface-tr...
International Petroleum Technology Conference, 2013
In last decade, a number of papers about nanoparticles studies have been published related to its benefit for oil and gas industries. Some of them discussed about the potential of nanoparticles for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) in the laboratory scale. One of possible EOR mechanisms of nanofluids has been described as disjoining pressure gradient . The benefit of using silica nanoparticles was explained by . Hence, the present study objective is to investigate the potential of hydrophilic silica nanoparticles suspension as enhanced oil recovery agent and find out the main mechanisms of nanofluids for EOR. In this study, hydrophilic nanoparticles with average particle size of 7 nm were used in both visualization glass micromodel flooding experiments and core flooding experiments. A water-wet transparent glass micromodel and Berea sandstone cores with 300-400 mD permeability were used as porous medium. Synthetic brine was used as disperse fluid for nanoparticles. In order to investigate the recovery mechanisms of nanofluids, interfacial tension (IFT) and contact angle between different concentration nanofluids and crude oil have been measured by using spinning drop and pendent drop methods. The experimental results indicate that the nanofluids can reduce the IFT between water phase and oil phase and make the solid surface more water wet. In the visualization glass micromodel flooding experiments, it was observed that nanofluids can release oil drops trapped by capillary pressure, while the high concentration nanofluids stabilized oil-water emulsion. For the core flooding experiments, nanofluids can increase recovery about 4-5% compared to brine flooding. These results indicate that these nanoparticles are potential EOR agents. The future expectation is that nanoparticles could mobilize more oil in the pore network at field scale to improve oil recovery. TX 75083-3836, U.S.A., fax +1-972-952-9435