Abstract
Sodium nanofluid for efficient oil recovery in heavy oil and oil sand reservoirs
Highlights
Oil with API gravity lower than 22.3° is categorized as heavy oil and, if less than 10°, as extra-heavy oil[1]
Heavy oil recovery techniques developed during the past several decades fall into two categories based on the reservoir depth: surface mining used for shallow deposits at depths of less than 200 m and in situ recovery for deeper deposits
We investigated the use of sodium nanoparticles for two applications that differ significantly: recovery of (1) heavy oil with a viscosity of approximately 2000 cP from a synthetic sandstone core under confining stress and (2) semi-solid bitumen from oil sands not subjected to confining stress
Summary
Oil with API gravity lower than 22.3° is categorized as heavy oil and, if less than 10°, as extra-heavy oil[1]. Low API gravity is due to the presence of a large fraction of high-molecular-weight components in crude oil that leads to high viscosity, resulting in low mobility in porous rock[1,2,3,4]. Heavy oil recovery techniques developed during the past several decades fall into two categories based on the reservoir depth: surface mining used for shallow deposits at depths of less than 200 m and in situ recovery for deeper deposits. Surface mining typically uses the combination of hot water and a light-hydrocarbon solvent to separate bitumen from excavated oil sands[5,6]. In situ recovery from heavy oil reservoirs requires a much wider range of techniques due to the greater number of parameters controlling the process in comparison with surface mining. As climate change has become more prominent, the injection of carbon dioxide for enhancing heavy oil recovery is currently attracting increasing research attention[14,15,16]
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