Abstract
Wettability is the ability of a fluid to stick to a solid surface in the presence of other immiscible fluids. Wettability alteration is crucial as it affects the amount of oil recovered from a given reservoir. The majority of enhanced oil recovery mechanisms purposefully alter the wettability of the reservoir rock from oil-wet to water-wet; to increase the amount of oil recovered from it. This study investigates the effect of various nanomaterials on the wettability, and particularly the brine phase contact angle, of a sand stone reservoir. The nanomaterials used are Magnesium/Aluminum Layered Double Hydroxide, Silica/Zirconia, and a combination of 80.0% Magnesium/Aluminum Layered Double Hydroxide (Mg/Al-LDH) and 20.0% Silica/Zirconia (Zi/Zr). The results suggest that a concentration of 4.0 g/L of Magnesium/Aluminum Layered Double Hydroxide (Mg/Al-LDH) decreases the brine phase contact angle, in the presence of oil, from 66° to 60° in 0.033 minute as opposed to Silica/Zirconia which increases the brine phase contact angle to 68° in the same time interval. The combination of both nanoparticles results in a decrease of 1.0° in the brine phase contact angle indicating that Silica/Zirconia (Zi/Zr) lowers the efficiency of Magnesium/Aluminum Layered Double Hydroxide’s adsorption to the sandstone surface.
Highlights
Wettability of rocks is classified into five categories, which are Water Wettability, oil wettability, neutral or intermediate wettability, fractional wettability, and mixed wettability
Nanomaterials are being used in the oil industry in the domain of Enhanced Oil Recovery where they are injected into core samples in the laboratory and the resulting increase in oil recovery is recorded
The use of Mg/Al-Layered Double Hydroxide (Mg/Al-LDH) as nanoparticles dispersed in brine is highly supported
Summary
Wettability of rocks is classified into five categories, which are Water Wettability, oil wettability, neutral or intermediate wettability, fractional wettability, and mixed wettability. The radii and the tangent are varying from zero at the planar interface to pi-theta at the spherical cap This will change the energy with changes in separation when they get close to each other [4]. This contact angle measurement method involves depositing a water, which is brine in the majority of the cases so as to simulate the reservoir saline condition, drop on the rock surface and adding volume to the drop until the maximum volume allowed is reached without increasing the three-phase line. The increase in volume step is followed by a volume removal one where the maximum volume that can be extracted before disturbing the drop profile’s geometry is removed and the resulting contact angle is measured [5]. Nanotechnology is a complex interdisciplinary science that has many categories like nano-chemistry, nanophysics, Nanomaterial, nano-electronics and nanobionics
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