Investigation of synergistic effects between silica nanoparticles, biosurfactant and salinity in simultaneous flooding for enhanced oil recovery (original) (raw)
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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...
Improving the microscopic sweep efficiency of water flooding using silica nanoparticles
Journal of Petroleum Exploration and Production Technology
Fluid/fluid and fluid/rock interfaces have large influence on the microscopic sweep efficiency of an enhanced oil recovery process. Therefore, modification of these interfaces using nanoparticles to suitable conditions might lead to better recovery factors. Particularly, wettability alteration and interfacial tension reduction are the two key mechanisms which should be considered. This study was designed to address the capability of nanoparticles to be used as a chemical agent for enhanced oil recovery by several core flooding experiments. The injected chemical solution was prepared using synthetic brine containing %3 NaCl, silica nanoparticles, and SDS surfactant. Contact angle in rock/oil/solution system and interfacial tension between oil/solution were measured. In addition, SEM pictures and XRD analysis were taken to conduct a more thorough investigation of effect of nanoparticles on sandstone core plugs. Nanoparticles and surfactant mixture were flooded with various concentrations under different scenarios. The results show the incremental oil recovery of nanoparticles floods in sandstone core samples which ranged from 4.85 to 11.7%. Conversely, the enhanced oil recovery of high concentration of nanoparticle floods in cores was small. It is deduced that the mechanisms responsible for incremental oil recovery are mainly interfacial tension reduction and wettability alteration toward water-wet condition. However, the flooding results as well as experimental study of possible retention revealed that nanoparticles can be considered as an effective chemical agent in enhanced oil recovery.
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.
How much would silica nanoparticles enhance the performance of low-salinity water flooding?
Petroleum Science, 2019
Nanofluids and low-salinity water (LSW) flooding are two novel techniques for enhanced oil recovery. Despite some efforts on investigating benefits of each method, the pros and cons of their combined application need to be evaluated. This work sheds light on performance of LSW augmented with nanoparticles through examining wettability alteration and the amount of incremental oil recovery during the displacement process. To this end, nanofluids were prepared by dispersing silica nanoparticles (0.1 wt%, 0.25 wt%, 0.5 wt% and 0.75 wt%) in 2, 10, 20 and 100 times diluted samples of Persian Gulf seawater. Contact angle measurements revealed a crucial role of temperature, where no wettability alteration occurred up to 80 °C. Also, an optimum wettability state (with contact angle 22°) was detected with a 20 times diluted sample of seawater augmented with 0.25 wt% silica nanoparticles. Also, extreme dilution (herein 100 times) will be of no significance. Throughout micromodel flooding, it was found that in an oil-wet condition, a combination of silica nanoparticles dispersed in 20 times diluted brine had the highest displacement efficiency compared to silica nanofluids prepared with deionized water. Finally, by comparing oil recoveries in both water-and oil-wet micromodels, it was concluded that nanoparticles could enhance applicability of LSW via strengthening wettability alteration toward a favorable state and improving the sweep efficiency.
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.
Temperature effect on performance of nanoparticle/surfactant flooding in enhanced heavy oil recovery
Petroleum Science
Recently, nanoparticles have been used along with surfactants for enhancing oil recovery. Although the recent studies show that oil recovery is enhanced using nanoparticle/surfactant solutions, some effective parameters and mechanisms involved in the oil recovery have not yet been investigated. Therefore, the temperature effect on the stability of nanoparticle/surfactant solutions and ultimate oil recovery has been studied in this work, and the optimal concentrations of both SiO2 nanoparticle and surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate) have been determined by the Central Composite Design method. In addition, the simultaneous effects of parameters and their interactions have been investigated. Study of the stability of the injected solutions indicates that the nanoparticle concentration is the most important factor affecting the solution stability. The surfactant makes the solution more stable if used in appropriate concentrations below the CMC. According to the micromodel flooding resul...
ACS Omega
Surfactant polymer flooding is one of the most common chemical enhanced oil recovery techniques, which improves not only the microscopic displacement of the fluid through the formation of the emulsion but also the volumetric sweep efficiency of the fluid by altering the viscosity of the displacing fluid. However, one constraint of surfactant flooding is the loss of the surfactant by adsorption onto the reservoir rock surface. Hence, in this study, an attempt has been made to reduce the adsorption of the surfactant on the rock surface using novel colloidal silica nanoparticles (CSNs). CSNs were used as an additive to improve the performance of the conventional surfactant polymer flooding. The reduction in adsorption was observed in both the presence and absence of a polymer. The presence of a polymer also reduced the adsorption of the surfactant. Addition of 25 vol % CSNs effectively reduced the adsorption of up to 61% in the absence of a polymer, which increased to 64% upon the introduction of 1000 ppm polymer in the solution at 2500 ppm of the surfactant concentration at 25°C. The adsorption of surfactant was also monitored with time, and it was found to be increasing with respect to time. The adsorption of surfactant increased from 1.292 mg/g after 0.5 days to 4.179 mg/g after 4 days at 2500 ppm of surfactant concentration at 25°C. The viscosity, surface tension, and wettability studies were also conducted on the chemical slug used for flooding. The addition of CSNs effectively reduced the surface tension as well as shifted the wettability toward water-wet at 25°C. Sand pack flooding experiments were performed at 60°C to access the potential of CSNs in oil recovery, and it was found that the addition of 25 vol % CSNs in the conventional surfactant polymer chemical slug aided in the additional oil recovery up to 5% as compared to that of the conventional surfactant polymer slug.