Polymeric nanospheres as a displacement fluid in enhanced oil recovery (original) (raw)
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International Journal of Chemical Engineering, 2020
In the petroleum industry, the researchers have developed a new technique called enhanced oil recovery to recover the remaining oil in reservoirs. Some reservoirs are very complex and require advanced enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques containing new materials and additives in order to produce maximum oil in economic and environmental friendly manners. In this work, the effects of nanosuspensions (KY-200) and polymer gel HPAM (854) on oil recovery and water cut were studied in the view of EOR techniques and their results were compared. The mechanism of nanosuspensions transportation through the sand pack was also discussed. The adopted methodology involved the preparation of gel, viscosity test, and core flooding experiments. The optimum concentration of nanosuspensions after viscosity tests was used for displacement experiments and 3 wt % concentration of nanosuspensions amplified the oil recovery. In addition, high concentration leads to more agglomeration; thus, high core plu...
Journal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology, 2014
Recently, a renewed interest arises in the application of nanotechnology for the upstream petroleum industry. In particular, adding nanoparticles to fluids may drastically benefit enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and improve well drilling, by changing the properties of the fluid, rocks wettability alteration, advanced drag reduction, strengthening the sand consolidation, reducing the interfacial tension and increasing the mobility of the capillary trapped oil. In this study, we focus on roles of clay nanoparticles on polymer viscosity. Polymer-flooding schemes for recovering residual oil have been in general less than satisfactory due to loss of chemical components by adsorption on reservoir rocks, precipitation, and resultant changes in rheological properties. Rheological properties' changes are mainly determined by the chemical structure and mix of the polymers, surface properties of the rock, composition of the oil and reservoir fluids, nature of the added polymers and solution conditions such as salinity, pH and temperature. On the other hand, in this study, the focus is on viscosity and salinity of solutions polyacrylamide polymer solutions with different nanoparticles degrees and molecular weight. Results in certain range of clay concentration used in this test, the way of clay adding, have positive effects on solution viscosity. The effect of the polymer content and salinity were also to be investigated.
Journal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology
The establishment of oil production well is becoming a challenge with the increasing demand for energy. The fulfillment of energy need requires large production of oil and gas as it is a primary source of energy. EOR is also important because of the enhancement in oil production from thirty percent to more than fifty percent. The chemical EOR is one of the techniques for the increment in oil production. Chemical flooding using water-soluble polymers like partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (PHPA) has been industrially used as an EOR technique. The paper deals with the effect of nano-silica particles on viscosity as well as the shear rate of the polymer solution. The change in viscosity, as well as shear rate, was studied at variable concentrations of the nano particles in the different concentrations of PHPA solution. Mutual correlation between viscosity and other parameters like temperature, shear rate, salinity, nanoparticle concentration, and polymer concentration was established using the statistical method.
Literature Review of Nanotechnology in the Enhanced Oil Recovery
Journal of Engineering Research
In recent studies, there has been an increasing focus on Nanoparticles Enhanced Oil Recovery (NPEOR). NPEOR is a method that was initially developed to improve microscopic and macroscopic displacement efficiency. In some recent applications NP have been assisted the conventional EOR methods such as a polymer, surfactant, and Co2 flooding, with the purpose of increasing the oil recovery. In this literature, the abilities to use NP in EOR are investigated. The function of different types of NP, different types of Dispersing agents, availability of nanomaterials in the lab, the effect of nanoparticles to change the properties, future challenges and concerns about the NP, are reviewed. However, the stability of suspensions of NP is still the most barrier to use NP in EOR. Upcoming studies are necessary to focus on the outcome of the appropriate techniques of NP to improve their stability under the worst conditions of reservoirs and investigate new types of nanoparticles.
Chemical methods of enhanced oil recovery (CEOR) are applied for improving oil recovery from different kinds of oil reservoirs due to their ability for modifying some crucial parameters in porous media, such as mobility ratio (M), wettability, spreading behavior of chemical solutions on rock surface and the interfa-cial tension (IFT) between water and oil. Few decades ago, the surfactant and polymer flooding were the most common CEOR methods have been applied for producing the remained hydrocarbon after primary and secondary recovery techniques. Recently, more attention has been focused on the potential applications of the nanotechnology in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). For this purpose, many studies reported that nanoparticles (NPs) have promising roles in CEOR processes due to their ability in changing oil recovery mechanisms and unlocking the trapped oil in the reservoir pore system. This paper presents a comprehensive and up-to-date review of the latest studies about various applications of nanoparticles (NPs) within the surfactant (S), polymer (P), surfactant-polymer (SP), alkaline-surfactant-polymer (ASP) and low salinity waterflooding processes, which exhibits the way for researchers who are interested in investigating this technology. The review covers the effects of nanoparticles on wettability alteration, interfa-cial tension reduction and oil recovery improvement, and discusses the factors affecting the rock/fluid interaction behavior in porous media through the nanofluid flooding.
American Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 2020
After secondary flooding, the process of injecting chemicals such as Nanoparticles into the reservoir in order to release and produce the trapped oil in that reservoir is called chemical flooding enhanced oil recovery (CEOR). The trapped oil is due to some forces such as viscous, gravity and capillary forces. Several reservoir problems have been solved with the use of Nanoparticles but the disadvantage is the retention of these Nanoparticles in the pore spaces which can cause pore blockage of reservoir rock and reduce its permeability. The primary aim of oil industry is to find the effect of these nanoparticles on oil recovery. In this work, some types of nanoparticles were selected for sand-pack oil displacement flood test. These Nanoparticles are Magnesium oxide (MgO), Aluminum oxide (Al 2 O 3) and silicon oxide (SiO 2). They were selected because of their effect to improve oil recovery. They were used to conduct enhanced oil recovery and to evaluate the effect of their retention in porous media at 45°C and 3000-3500 Pisa. The Nanoparticles were dispersed in brine. The control experiment and the experiment when Nanoparticles were dispersed in brine were the two set of experiment conducted. The control experiment was used as a bench mark to compare the effect of nanoparticles on oil recovery. From the results obtained from this experiment, Aluminum oxide (Al 2 O 3) was the best performed Nanoparticle after enhanced oil recovery flooding process. Nanoparticles were used to prepare the nanofluids used for tertiary recovery. Nanofluids used to displace oil yield better results but when only brine was used, the recovery was low compared with that of nanoparticles. Increase in nanoparticle concentration increases oil recovery. There was a decrease in permeability of the reservoir rock. Increase in nanoparticles concentration increases the total cost of preparing the nanofluid. The decrease in permeability is caused by pore blockage due to nanoparticles retention in porous media. Only Al 2 O 3 at 0.2%wt is economical feasible compared with other nanoparticles. The ability of nanoparticles to alter certain factors in the formation and in oil properties can be taken as advantage on oil recovery.
Energy & Fuels, 2014
This paper presents the results of imbibition tests using a reservoir crude oil and a reservoir brine solution with a high salinity and a suitable nanofluid that displaces crude oil from Berea sandstone (water-wet) and single-glass capillaries. The Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) nanofluid is specially formulated to survive in a high-salinity environment and is found to result in an efficiency of 50% for Berea sandstone, compared to 17% using the brine alone at a reservoir temperature of 55°C. We also present a direct visual evidence of the underlying mechanism based on the structural disjoining pressure for the crude oil displacement using IIT nanofluid from the solid substrate in high-salinity brine. These results aid our understanding of the role of the nanofluid in displacing crude oil from the rock, especially in a high-salinity environment containing Ca 2+ and Mg 2+ ions. Results are also reported using Berea sandstone and a nanofluid containing silica nanoparticles.
Application of Polymer and Nanomaterials for Improving Heavy Oil Recovery
2019
Booming population growth and economic activity have contributed significantly to an increased demand for energy in the last few decades, specifically in Canada. A major source of energy is oil extracted from underground petroleum reservoirs. Utilizing current technology and equipment, only a small portion of oil can be produced and recovered. Steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), used as a common technique to produce heavy oil in Canada (specifically in oil sands reservoirs), requires a lot of energy and negatively impacts the environment. Using environmentally friendly and cost-effective techniques instead of or combined with SAGD improves the extraction of oil from Canadian oil reservoirs. Reservoir pressure, which is a driving force for pushing oil toward production wells, reduces drastically in the early stages of oil production from underground resources. This leads to a significant decrease in oil production rate. To solve this problem, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods inject water, gas, or chemical solutions to maintain reservoir pressure. When water is injected (water flooding) into heavy oil reservoirs, it cannot push the viscous oil smoothly because of water's lower viscosity as compared to oil. As a result, injected water tends to bypass the pores containing trapped oil and the flooding becomes inefficient. To overcome this problem, one method adds polymers to the injected water. The addition of polymers leads to a more uniform flooding by increasing the viscosity of the injected fluid. Unfortunately, this approach suffers seriously from degradation of polymers at high temperatures and precipitation of polymers due to interaction with ions like sodium and calcium in brine. To solve these problems, the addition of nanomaterials to a polymer solution is highly recommended. The main focus of this PhD dissertation is to evaluate the effect of surface chemistry and geometry of nanomaterial on creation of a network with large polymer molecules. In addition, to mimic the large deformations in converging and diverging pores in porous media, linear and nonlinear rheology were employed to characterize the mechanical and flow behaviors of these hybrid dispersions. Sandpacks were used as the porous media to simulate oil reservoirs. Different hybrid dispersions were injected into sandpacks and the yield of recovered oil was reported. Results of this work can pave the way for use of polymer/nanomaterial solutions for heavy oil recovery. This study also demonstrated that large deformation oscillatory shear tests can be employed to distinguish flow behavior of hybrid systems. It was also shown that interaction iii between polymer and nanomaterial affects network structure and, consequently, oil recovery. Furthermore, size of nanomaterial compared to pore size distribution of porous media is a significant parameter that should be considered. The outcomes of this study could be helpful in improving heavy oil recovery in thin oil formations such as the Cardium, Montney, and Ostracod formations. These formations are too thin to utilize processes like steam-assisted gravity drainage and solvent vapor extraction, making this technique significant for increasing oil recovery in Canadian heavy oil reservoirs. iv Acknowledgments I would like to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to my supervisors, Dr. Uttandaraman Sundararaj and Dr. Zhangxin Chen, for their support, inspiration, encouragement, supervision, and confidence in me throughout my doctoral research.
Improved Oil Recovery by Nanofluids Flooding: An Experimental Study
All Days, 2012
In a past decade, various nanoparticle experiments have been initiated for improved/enhanced oil recovery (IOR/EOR) project by worldwide petroleum researchers and it has been recognized as a promising agent for IOR/EOR at laboratory scale. A hydrophilic silica nanoparticle with average primary particle size of 7 nm was chosen for this study. Nanofluid was synthesized using synthetic reservoir brine. In this paper, experimental study has been performed to evaluate oil recovery using nanofluid injection onto several water-wet Berea sandstone core plugs. Three injection schemes associated with nanofluid were performed: 1) nanofluid flooding as secondary recovery process, 2) brine flooding as tertiary recovery processs (following after nanofluid flooding at residual oil saturation), and 3) nanofluid flooding as tertiary recovery process. Interfacial tension (IFT) has been measured using spinning drop method between synthetic oil and brine/nanofluid. It observed that IFT decreased when n...