A Novel Nanodrag Reducer for Low Permeability Reservoir Water Flooding: Long-Chain Alkylamines Modified Graphene Oxide

Hong Chen,Zhong-Bin Ye,Xiang Zeng,Yuan Xu,Lin Xiao

doi:10.1155/2016/8716257

Abstract

Chemical modification of graphene oxide (GO) by grafting hydrophobic chains on the surface has drawn much attention nowadays in the academic world, and it was suggested that modified GO could lead to new functionalized materials with specific structure and different properties. In this paper, modified GO (M-GO) were synthesized by chemically grafting alkylamines with varying chain lengths on the graphene oxide surface. Successful grafting of alkylamines was confirmed using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra, X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and Raman spectroscopy measurements. In addition, we investigated the properties of M-GO as nanodrag reducer in low permeability reservoir water flooding. Water contact angle (CA) measurements revealed that the hydrophobic nature of GO depended on the chain length of the grafted alkylamines. And flooding experiments showed that the hexadecylamine- and octadecylamine-modified GO had an ability to reduce water injection pressure and improve water-phase permeability of the low permeability reservoirs during water flooding. So the M-GO would have potential applications in oilfield exploitation.

Highlights

Graphene, an allotrope of carbon, has attracted extensive attention from both experimental and theoretical scientific communities due to its extraordinary properties, such as high structural strength, high surface-area to volume ratio, and excellent electrical properties [1,2,3,4,5,6]
A previous study showed that hydrophobic long-chain alkyl groups in alkylamines and hydrophilic amine groups chemically reacted with the graphene oxide (GO) surface mainly via two types of reaction, namely, (1) amidation reaction between amine groups and carboxylic acid sites of GO and (2) nucleophilic substitution reactions between amine and epoxy groups on GO surface
Modified graphene oxide (M-GO) was synthesized by grafting long alkylamines chain with varying lengths, which could be used as nanodrag reducer in oilfield water flooding

Summary

Introduction

An allotrope of carbon, has attracted extensive attention from both experimental and theoretical scientific communities due to its extraordinary properties, such as high structural strength, high surface-area to volume ratio, and excellent electrical properties [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Graphene could be produced through several methods, such as mechanical exfoliation, chemical vapor deposition, electric arc discharge, and oxidation-dispersion-reduction. Among these methods, the oxidation-dispersion-reduction technique is widely used for it possesses great potential for larger-scale synthesis of graphene. Various graphene-based materials could be conveniently synthesized from graphene oxide (GO) which is obtained from natural graphite flakes by the chemical oxidation [12,13,14,15]. GO is a layered material featuring a variety of oxygencontaining functionalities with epoxy and hydroxyl groups on the basal plane and carbonyl and carboxyl groups along the edge [16]. Understanding the wettability of GO is important for the in-depth study of graphene-based functional materials. The wettability of a solid surface is strongly influenced by both chemical composition and geometric structure (or surface roughness) [21,22,23]

Methods

Results

Conclusion