Abstract
Utilization of metal-oxide nanoparticles (NPs) in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) has generated substantial recent research interest in this area. Among these NPs, zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) have demonstrated promising results in improving oil recovery due to their prominent thermal properties. These nanoparticles can also be polarized by electromagnetic (EM) field, which offers a unique Nano-EOR approach called EM-assisted Nano-EOR. However, the impact of NPs concentrations on oil recovery mechanism under EM field has not been well established. For this purpose, ZnO nanofluids (ZnO-NFs) of two different particle sizes (55.7 and 117.1 nm) were formed by dispersing NPs between 0.01 wt.% to 0.1 wt.% in a basefluid of sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS) and NaCl to study their effect on oil recovery mechanism under the electromagnetic field. This mechanism involved parameters, including mobility ratio, interfacial tension (IFT) and wettability. The displacement tests were conducted in water-wet sandpacks at 95˚C, by employing crude oil from Tapis. Three tertiary recovery scenarios have been performed, including (i) SDBS surfactant flooding as a reference, (ii) ZnO-NFs flooding, and (iii) EM-assisted ZnO-NFs flooding. Compare with incremental oil recovery from surfactant flooding (2.1% original oil in place/OOIP), nanofluid flooding reaches up to 10.2% of OOIP at optimal 0.1 wt.% ZnO (55.7 nm). Meanwhile, EM-assisted nanofluid flooding at 0.1 wt.% ZnO provides a maximum oil recovery of 10.39% and 13.08% of OOIP under EM frequency of 18.8 and 167 MHz, respectively. By assessing the IFT/contact angle and mobility ratio, the optimal NPs concentration to achieve a favorable ER effect and interfacial disturbance is determined, correlated to smaller hydrodynamic-sized nanoparticles that cause strong electrostatic repulsion between particles.
Highlights
In recent years, nanoparticles (NPs) have employed as a promising means of improving the reservoir characteristics and increasing oil recovery, resulting in the term of Nano-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) [1,2,3]
The minimum interfacial tension (IFT) value, 10.02 mN.m-1, and the smallest three-phase contact angle under EM field, 42.47 ̊, were achieved by the 0.1 wt.% ZnO@500 NPs, which is proportional to the additional recovery of 13.08% OOIP
This change in IFT and contact angle is related to the nanoparticles’ surface energy, which directly linked with the average hydrodynamic size (240.9 nm) of 0.1 wt.% ZnO@500 NPs
Summary
Nanoparticles (NPs) have employed as a promising means of improving the reservoir characteristics and increasing oil recovery, resulting in the term of Nano-EOR [1,2,3]. Ogolo et al [17] studied eight NPs, including ZnO, Al2O3, MgO, Fe2O3, ZrO2, NiO, SnO2, and SiO2 and observed that alumina NPs of an average size of 40 nm produced a higher tertiary oil recovery (12.5%) through reduction of viscosity ratio compared to other nanometals, when dispersed in brine. Joonaki and Ghanaatian [19] studied the impact of nano-oxides (aluminum-, iron-, and silicon-oxide) on the IFT and noticed that increasing NPs concentration decreased the IFT. This suggests that an optimal NPs concentration is crucial to achieve a maximum oil recovery, and higher NPs concentrations have no substantial impact on the recovery factor, rather an increase in the cost only
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