Remediation of colloid-facilitated contaminant transport in saturated porous media treated by nanoparticles

Abstract

Facilitation of contaminant transport in porous media due to the effect of indigenous colloidal fine materials has been widely observed in laboratory and field studies. It has been explained by the increase in the apparent solubility of low soluble contaminants as a result of their adsorption on the surface of fine particles. Attachment of colloidal fine particles onto the rock surface could be a promising remedy for this challenge. In this experimental study, the effect of five types of metal oxide nanoparticles, c-Al 2 O 3 , ZnO, CuO, MgO, and SiO 2, on suspension transport was investigated. In several core flooding tests, different nanofluids were used to saturate the synthetic porous media. Subsequently, after sufficient soaking time, the suspension was injected into the treated porous media. Analysis of the effluent samples' concentration by Turbidimeter apparatus demonstrated that the presence of nanoparticles on the rock surface resulted in a significant reduction in fine concentrations in the effluent samples compared with non-treated media; ZnO and cAl 2 O 3 demonstrated the best scenarios among the tests performed in this study. In order to characterize the surface properties of the treated porous media, the zeta potential of the surface was measured. Results showed that the treated porous media acts as a strong adsorbent of fine particles, which are the main carrier of contaminants in porous media. These findings were quantitatively confirmed by calculation of the total energy of interaction between the fine particles and rock surface using the Derjaguin-Landau-Verwey-Overbeek theory.

Effect of Various Silica Nanofluids: Reduction of Fines Migrations and Surface Modification of Berea Sandstone

“…For example, they observed that treating the porous medium with silica dispersed in DIW led to approximately 20% reduction in effluent fines concentration as compared to the reference case. They observed that porous media that has been treated with NPs acts as a strong adsorbent of fine particles [9]. Huang et al [30] made a similar observation wherein they observed that for a sand pack treated with NP, the pressure drop across the sand pack was 10% lower than of sand pack without NP, showing an improvement in water injectivity.…”

“…The small size and high specific surface area of NP offer unique advantages like allowing them to easily pass through pore throats and enhanced interaction in the reservoir even with a small quantity of NP. NPs have displayed the potential to act as surface modifiers that could alter the wettability and reduce the oil/water interfacial tension leading to better mobility of the oil phase [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] and reduce fines migration [8,9]. Recent laboratory studies have indicated that nanofluids, which are colloidal dispersions of NP in a dispersing medium have the potential to increase oil recovery [2,7,[10][11][12][13].…”

“…This work is aimed at studying the surface modification of berea sandstone by the adsorption/ adhesion of silica NPs. Arab and Pourafshary [8] and Arab, Pourafshary, Ayatollahi and Habibi [9] studied the surface modification of sandstone by NPs to reduce fines migration and colloid facilitated transport in porous medium modified by NPs. However, affinity of NPs towards major minerals present in sandstone, adsorption/adhesion of NPs in the porous medium and the influence of nanofluid stabilization on the in-situ surface modification has been addressed in this study.…”

Application of nanofluid to control fines migration to improve the performance of low salinity water flooding and alkaline flooding

“…Furthermore, Arab et al (2014b) investigated the effect of five types of metal oxide NPs, γ-Al 2 O 3 , CuO, MgO, SiO 2 and ZnO, on migrating fines and reported the very enhanced capability of ZnO NP dispersed in distilled water to modify the surface charge of the medium which reduces the repulsive electrostatic forces between a fine and the rock surface which in turn, facilitates particle retention. In addition, Arab and Pourafshary (2013) investigated the effect of NPs to remedy the permeability impairment induced by LSW injection into the Berea sandstone cores.…”

Transport and Deposition of Alumina Nanoparticles in Water Saturated Porous Media: An Experimental Study

“…In the recent years, application of nanoparticles (NPs) in different fields such as petroleum engineering, [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] environmental engineering, and wastewater treatment [12][13][14][15] and chemical engineering [16][17][18] has been considered by many researchers. NPs' applications became widespread as a result of their unprecedented physicochemical properties such as small size (1-100 nm), high specific surface area, very high adsorption potential, and heat conductivity.…”