Abstract
In the last two decades, nanotechnology has flourished due to its vast number of applications in many fields such as drug delivery, oil and gas, and thermal applications, like cooling and air-conditioning. This study focuses on the applications of nanoparticles/nanofluids in the Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) process to increase oil recovery efficiency. To understand the nanoparticle-assisted EOR process, the first step is to understand the flow characteristics of nanoparticles in porous media, including entrapment and release in the pores and the behavior of nanoparticles under high temperatures, pressures, and salinity levels and in the presence of external electric and magnetic fields. Also, the process looks at the roles of various pore distributions during their application as EOR agents. The experimental approaches are not only time consuming, but they are also cumbersome and expensive. Hence, the mathematical models could help to facilitate the understanding of the transport and interaction of nanofluids in a reservoir and how such processes can be optimized to get maximum oil recovery and, in turn, reduce the production cost. This paper reviews and critically analyzes the latest developments in mathematical modeling and simulation techniques that have been reported for nanofluid-assisted EOR. One section is dedicated to discussing the challenges ahead, as well as the research gaps in the modeling approach to help the readers to also contribute to further enlightening the modeling nanofluid-assisted EOR process.
Highlights
The primary energy resource in the current decade is still hydrocarbons
In order to study the flow of nanoparticles in porous media, it is essential to understand the principles of filtration theory
A detailed review of the modeling of nanoparticle-assisted Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) was presented in this paper
Summary
The primary energy resource in the current decade is still hydrocarbons. Renewable sources of energy are in the development phase; they cannot fulfill energy requirements and need a lot of research and development in terms of efficiency and cost to make them viable replacements to the hydrocarbons [1]. The production of hydrocarbon energy has to be increased to fulfill the rising demand for energy and to reduce the production costs To achieve this goal, maximum extraction should be completed from the existing operational reservoirs, since a vast amount (up to 60%) of the oil remains untouched in the reservoirs due to limitations in the oil recovery process [2]. As experimental studies have given in-depth analyses of NP-assisted EOR techniques, different article reviews that have been published have discussed the progress in experimental and theoretical studies in terms of newly developed nanomaterials and their limitations, as well as the challenges ahead [2,4,5,7,8,9,10,11,12].
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