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 (IOS 20-24 and IOS 19-23), 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 surfacetreated silica nanoparticles was investigated using a HPHT rheometer. Morphology and particle size distributions of pure and coated silica nanoparticles were studied using a field emission scanning electron microscope. A series of core-flood runs was conducted to evaluate the oil recovery factor. The coated silica nanoparticles were found to alter rheological properties and exhibited a shear-thinning behavior as the stability of the coated silica nanoparticles could be improved considerably. At low shear rates, the viscosity slightly increases, and the opposite happens at higher shear rates. Furthermore, the surfacemodified silica nanoparticles were found to alter the wettability of the aqueous phase into strongly water-wet by changing the contact angle from 80° to 3° measured against glass slides representing sandstone rocks. Oil-water IFT results showed that the surface treatment by surfactant lowered the oil-water IFT by 30%. Also, the viscosity of brine increased from 0.001 to 0.008 Pa s by introducing SiO 2 nanoparticles to the aqueous phase for better displacement efficiency during chemicalassisted EOR. The core-flood experiments revealed that the ultimate oil recovery is increased by approximately 13% with a surfactant-coated silica nanofluid flood after the conventional waterflooding that proves the potential of smart nanofluids for enhancing oil recovery. The experimental results imply that the use of surfactant-coated nanoparticles in tertiary oil recovery could facilitate the displacement efficiency, alter the wettability toward more water-wet and avoid viscous fingering for stable flood front and additional oil recovery.
Graphene-based membranes have unique nanochannels and can offer advantageous properties for the water desalination process. Although tremendous efforts have been devoted to heightening membrane performance and broadening their application, there is still lack of a systematic literature review on the development and future directions of graphene-based membranes for desalination. In this mini-review, literature published between 2011 and 2022 were analyzed by using the bibliometric method. We found that the major contributors to these publications and the highest citations were from China and the USA. Nearly 80% of author keywords in this analysis were used less than twice, showing the broad interest and great dispersion in this field. The recent advances, remaining gaps, and strategies for future research, were discussed. The development of new multifunctional nanocomposite materials, heat-driven/solar-driven seawater desalination, and large-scale industrial applications, will be important research directions in the future. This literature analysis summarized the recent development of the graphene-based membranes for desalination application, and will be useful for researchers in gaining new insights into this field.
An intervention of radiotracer technology in the EOR program has been initiated using commercial core-flood set up. A commercial type of Berea core is used throughout the experiment. 99mTc is chosen as a radioactive tracer for this experiment, which has a half-life of 6 hours and emits gamma rays’ energy of 0.104MeV. It is a liquid radiotracer with the activity of 10GBq (270mCi), eluted and prepared by Institute Cancer of Malaysia (IKN) before transporting it to the laboratory at Centre of Research in Enhanced Oil Recovery (COREOR), Universiti Teknologi Petronas. The experiment was conducted after 3.5 half-lives. Thus the activity has reduced to approximately (1.48GBq) 40mCi during injection inside the system. The results can be used to assist the reservoir engineer in determining the exact water-tracer breakthrough, localize the location of water-tracer concerning time, and determine the residence time distribution and mean residence time of the core flood where the hydrodynamics of the flow can be predicted. Moreover, the introduction of radiotracer inside the core flood rig can be translated as secondary oil recovery. The idea is to integrate radiotracer technology into the existing commercial core flood set up (FES350) to track the movement of fluid during water-flooding operation. Besides, it can be considered as the first interaction of radiotracer in the enhanced oil recovery application studies in Malaysia.
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