Abstract
Chemically enhanced oil recovery methods are utilized to increase the oil recovery by improving the mobility ratio, altering the wettability, and/or lowering the interfacial tension between water and oil. Surfactants and polymers have been used for this purpose for the last few decades. Recently, nanoparticles have attracted the attention due to their unique properties. A large number of nanoparticles have been investigated for enhanced oil recovery applications either alone or in combination with surfactants and/or polymers. This review discusses the various types of nanoparticles that have been utilized in enhanced oil recovery. The review highlights the impact of nanoparticles on wettability alteration, interfacial tension, and rheology. The review also covers the factors affecting the oil recovery using nanoparticles and current challenges in field implementation.
Highlights
It is expected that worldwide energy demand will increase up to 50% by the end of 2030 [1]
Several chemicals and thermal and gas injection methods are employed to recover the remaining oil. These are termed as tertiary oil recovery or enhanced oil recovery (EOR) [4,5,6,7,8,9]
It was reported that the flooding based on SiO2, NiO, and Fe3O4 improved the oil recovery by 22.6%, 14.6%, and 8.1%, respectively, when water injection was set as the reference point
Summary
It is expected that worldwide energy demand will increase up to 50% by the end of 2030 [1]. Several chemicals and thermal and gas injection methods are employed to recover the remaining oil. In chemical EOR, better recovery is achieved by injecting certain chemicals These chemicals are injected to improve the mobility ratio, to reduce interfacial tension (IFT), and/or to alter the wettability of the rock [10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18]. EOR chemicals are evaluated mainly using rheology, interfacial tension, wettability alteration, and core flooding experiments. The research on applications of NPs in EOR focused on how these NPs influence the above-mentioned properties and oil recovery. Subsequent sections in this review discuss how various NPs influence rheology, interfacial tension, wettability, and oil recovery
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