Hydrophilic Nanoparticle-Based Enhanced Oil Recovery: Microfluidic Investigations on Mechanisms

Xu, Ke; Agrawal, Devesh; Darugar, Qusai

doi:10.1021/acs.energyfuels.8b02496

Cited by 38 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…Additionally, silica NPs can be synthesized and surface functionalized to meet particular reservoir conditions [8,9]. Promising oil recovery results have been reported in the literature due to silica nanoparticles injection [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] under a variety of experimental conditions. That is, the use of silica NPs of variable size, composition, surface functionalities, etc., suspended in aqueous solutions with diverse ionic strength [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] or in non-aqueous solutions [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polymer-functionalized silica nanoparticles for improving water flood sweep efficiency in Berea sandstones

2020

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Extraction of oil trapped after primary and secondary oil production stages still poses many challenges in the oil industry. Therefore, innovative enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies are required to run the production more economically. Recent advances suggest renewed application of surfacefunctionalized nanoparticles (NPs) for oil recovery due to improved stability and solubility, stabilization of emulsions, and low retention on porous media. The improved surface properties make the NPs more appropriate to improve microscopic sweep efficiency of water flood compared to bare nanoparticles, especially in challenging reservoirs. However, the EOR mechanisms of NPs are not well understood. This work evaluates the effect of four types of polymer-functionalized silica NPs as additives to the injection water for EOR. The NPs were examined as tertiary recovery agents in water-wet Berea sandstone rocks at 60 °C. The NPs were diluted to 0.1 wt. % in seawater before injection. Crude oil was obtained from North Sea field. The transport of NPs though porous media, as well as nanoparticles interactions with the rock system, were investigated to reveal possible EOR mechanisms. The experimental results showed that functionalized-silica NPs can effectively increase oil recovery in water-flooded reservoirs. The incremental oil recovery was up to 14% of original oil in place (OOIP). Displacement studies suggested that oil recovery was affected by both interfacial tension reduction and wettability modification, however, the microscopic flow diversion due to pore plugging (log-jamming) and the formation of nanoparticle-stabilized emulsions were likely the relevant explanations for the mobilization of residual oil.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polymer-functionalized silica nanoparticles for improving water flood sweep efficiency in Berea sandstones

2020

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“…Before the experiment began, the microfluidic chip was saturated by the displaced phase. The injection rate was also set in the microinjection pump, which corresponded to the injection rate at the inlet of microfluidic chip [36,[45][46][47].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intelligent Microfluidics Research on Relative Permeability Measurement and Prediction of Two-Phase Flow in Micropores

et al. 2021

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Relative permeability is a key index in resource exploitation, energy development, environmental monitoring, and other fields. However, the current determination methods of relative permeability are inefficient and invisible without considering wetting order and pore structure characteristics either. In this study, microfluidic experiments were designed for figuring out key factors impacting on the two-phase relative permeability. The optimized intelligent image recognition was established for saturation extraction. The deep learning was conducted for the prediction of two-phase permeability based on the inputs from microfluidic experiments and image recognition and optimized. Results revealed that phase saturation, wetting order, and pore topology were the key factors influencing the two-phase relative permeability, with the importance of 38.22%, 34.84%, and 26.94%, respectively. The deep learning-based relative permeability model performed well, with MSE < 0.05 and operational efficiency of 3 ms/epoch. Aiming at relative permeability model optimization, on the one hand, the dividing ratio of training set and testing set for flooding phase relative permeability prediction achieved the highest prediction accuracy at 7 : 3, while that for displaced phase was 6 : 4. On the other hand, tanh() activation function performed 40% more accurate than the sigmoid() activation function.

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“…The swelling ratio was seen increasing at lower salinities. They also outlined flow resistance in the swept region, which causes fluid flow improvements in the untapped region, hence the sweeping efficiencies are improved which ultimately improves recoveries [23].…”

Section: Layering Of Nps On Solid Surfacementioning

confidence: 99%

Enhanced Oil Recovery by Hydrophilic Silica Nanofluid: Experimental Evaluation of the Impact of Parameters and Mechanisms on Recovery Potential

et al. 2021

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Nanofluids as an EOR technique are reported to enhance oil recoveries. Among all the nanomaterial silica with promising lab results, economic and environmental acceptability are an ideal material for future applications. Despite the potential to enhance recoveries, understanding the two-fold impact of parameters such as concentration, salinity, stability, injection rate, and irreproducibility of results has arisen ambiguities that have delayed field applications. This integrated study is conducted to ascertain two-fold impacts of concentration and salinity on recovery and stability and evaluates corresponding changes in the recovery mechanism with variance in the parameters. Initially, silica nanofluids’ recovery potential was evaluated by tertiary flooding at different concentrations (0.02, 0.05, 0.07, 0.1) wt. % at 20,000 ppm salinity. The optimum concentration of 0.05 wt. % with the highest potential in terms of recovery, wettability change, and IFT reduction was selected. Then nano-flooding was carried out at higher salinities at a nanomaterial concentration of 0.05 wt. %. For the mechanism’s evaluation, the contact angle, IFT and porosity reduction, along with differential profile changes were analyzed. The recovery potential was found at its highest for 0.05 wt. %, which reduced when concentrations were further increased as the recovery mechanisms changed and compromised stability. Whereas salinity also had a two-fold impact with salinity at 30,000 ppm resulting in lower recovery, higher salinity destabilized the solution but enhanced recoveries by enhancing macroscopic mechanisms of pore throat plugging.

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Hydrophilic Nanoparticle-Based Enhanced Oil Recovery: Microfluidic Investigations on Mechanisms

Cited by 38 publications

References 71 publications

Polymer-functionalized silica nanoparticles for improving water flood sweep efficiency in Berea sandstones

Polymer-functionalized silica nanoparticles for improving water flood sweep efficiency in Berea sandstones

Intelligent Microfluidics Research on Relative Permeability Measurement and Prediction of Two-Phase Flow in Micropores

Enhanced Oil Recovery by Hydrophilic Silica Nanofluid: Experimental Evaluation of the Impact of Parameters and Mechanisms on Recovery Potential

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