applications of nano technology in enhanced oil recovery

Applications of Nano technology inenhanced oil recovery

Professor: Dr. sedaee

Mahdi shahbazi,hossein mokhlesi

winter 2017

IN THE NAME OF GOD

Nano technologyNanotechnology ("nanotech") is manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and super molecular scale. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabrication of macro scale products, also now referred to as molecular nanotechnology. Nanotechnology as defined by size is naturally very broad, including fields of science as diverse as surface science, organic chemistry, molecular biology, semiconductor physics, micro fabrication, molecular engineering, etc.

Nano technology a new solutions to old challenges

Enhanced Oil Recovery techniques are gaining more attention worldwide as the proved oil reserves are declining and the oil price is hiking. Although many giant oil reservoirs in the world were already screened for EOR processes, the main challenges such as low sweep efficiency, costly techniques, possible formation damages, transportation of huge amounts of EOR agents to the fields especially for offshore cases, analyzing micro-scale multi-phase flow in the rock to the large scale tests and the lack of analyzing tools in traditional experimental works, hinder the proposed EOR processes.

Nano in EOR

Nano can be named one of the new science in oil industry. One of the major characteristics of Nano-technology is the ability to combine it with other methods of EOR. Generally it can be said Nano technology refers to the ability to complete and fix the weakness of the old ways and discover the new mechanisms for EOR to continue the way.

Applications of Nano

As mentioned previously Nano can use to develop new techniques and completed the old method.so we can divide the applications of Nano-technology to there principal group:

• Using from Nano to characterizing reservoir• Using Nano to complete other methods• Using from Nanofluid to change reservoir characterizes

Nano to characterizing reservoirNano-sensors: Very complicated types of fluids and rock structure persuaded the scientists to provide reservoir engineers with sensors installed in the wells monitoring flow regimes, fluid composition and reservoir properties. Besides, there are several types of tools to be used in the reservoir for scanning, logging and testing the rock, fluid as well as reservoir condition to find the optimized production scenario for higher production rate and better recovery efficiency. All the well bore sensors and monitoring tools are large enough that need preparing extra space for them in the well opening, therefore they can hardly monitor far beyond the well location which is very tiny compared to the reservoir volume.

Nano to characterizing reservoirUsing Nano-scale sensors will give the engineers the chance to: • Trace the trapped oil, its saturation, location with respect to the

pore spaces and associated forces need to recover it for EOR. • Monitor the rock openings in micro-scale to have digital maps of

the pore-throat network for modeling the injecting/producing fluids.

• Assessing in depth heterogeneities especially for vuggy and fractured reservoirs.

• Checking the boundaries, fluids contacts, connectivity with neighboring reservoirs to make an accurate 3D/4D seismic view of the formation which enhance the understanding for any EOR activities.

• Checking the success of remediation technique if any. The remedies have been used during many EOR processes such as selective plugging and water shutoff. Nanotechnology through Nano scale sensors could be utilized to check if it has been successfully employed or not.

Nano to characterizing reservoir

Nano-Analysis: The analytical equipment's available in the field of nanotechnology to analyze the surface changes such as Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and X-Ray Photo Spectroscopy (XRP), Raman Spectroscopy, Zeta Potential meter; scanning tools such as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Micro and Nano CT scanners are very useful tools in assessing the structure of porous media, wettability alteration and many other investigations in this field that needs very accurate measurement in Nano-scale changes inside the porous media and at the fluid-fluid/fluids-solid interfaces. Professional expertise's are needed first to use these equipment's then to mimic the reservoir condition in the lab to be analyzed through these techniques.

Nano to complete other methods


Nano-scale movement in micro size porous media: The most important challenges to traditional EOR processes are the transfer of injected components into porous media as the pore throats could be plugged causing permeability reduction and increasing the cost of injection. Since the Nano-scale components are usually in the order of 100-50nm, can easily flow into the rock pore structure which is usually greater than 10 micron. Dust injection is the well known form of nanoparticles injected into the oil saturated formation to perform a variety of changes from fluid properties to interfacial changes both for fluid-fluid and fluids-solid interfaces.


Very high specific surface area of nanoparticles: This is the most notable property for enhanced mass transfer between the phases and changing fluid properties more easily and at lower costs, homogenously distributed in porous media, adsorbed on the rock surface to change the wettability and changing the thermal conductivity of the fluids and the rock.


Chemicals disadvantage: Surfactants can also reduce the IFT to an ultra low value. However, surfactants are not stable under harsh reservoir conditions, and the loss rate of surfactant during waterflooding is quite high. Large quantities are required for effective recovery and the transportation of the chemicals to the oil fields is expensive so Nano particles can be a good candidate to Bested the chemical methods.

Nano in WAG

nanoparticles were added to the water phase of water alternating gas (WAG) and injected into water flood residual oil in two dimensional glass micro models to study the effect of the nanoparticles qualitatively at low pressures. Silicon oxide (SiO2) and aluminum oxide (Al2O3) nanoparticles, at different concentrations.

Nano in WAG

Nanofluid to change reservoir characterizes

The main reason for choosing Nano its presence in areas where other methods have no ability to do it. At the next slide we see a table that show the EOR method against property that need to change.The table show that Nano technology is the best choose were the other method can’t use or have not good oil recovery such as low permeability, high salinity or hardness,….


Nanofluid can use to change property’s of reservoir such as:• Fluid-fluid properties: interfacial tension, viscosity• fluid-rock properties: contact angle, relative permeability• Thermal conductivity of injection fluid

Case I(Egypt)

El-Diasty and Salem, 2013 investigated using Nanosilica particles on real Egyptian formation to compare between using waterflooding and Nanofluid flooding as EOR methods. As shown in next slide, it is obvious that using water flooding to displace the oil in place recovered 36% of IOIP at the breakthrough point while the Nanofluid flooding recovered 67% of IOIP at the breakthrough point. This is an evidence for the ability of the Nanofluid to displace the oil better than the water.

Case I

Case II(Nigeria)

Some selected types of nanoparticles that are likely to be used include oxides of Aluminum, Zinc, Magnesium, Iron, Zirconium, Nickel, Tin and Silicon. These nanoparticles were used to conduct EOR experiments under surface conditions. The first involved displacing the injected oil with the Nanofluids. In the second case, the sands were soaked in Nanofluids for 60 days before oil was injected into the system and displaced with low salinity brine

Case II

Case IIConclusions The conclusions made after this study are: 1.Aluminium oxide nanoparticles dispersed in brine and distilled water have the tendency to improve oil recovery through reduction of oil viscosity.2.Silane treated Silicon oxide and hydrophobic Silicon oxide dispersed in ethanol have the tendency to improve oil recovery through change of rock wettability. Ethanol when used alone (without nanoparticles) also enhances oil recovery by reduction of interfacial tension between oil and water.3.The type of fluid used for nanoparticle dispersion in sands to improve oil recovery is important because it plays a significant role in the process.4.Magnesium oxide and Zinc oxide in distilled water and in brine result in permeability problems. Recovery from the use of Magnesium oxide for EOR is very poor.5.Comparing the efficiency of different fluids(without nanoparticles in them) in displacing oil from sands generally, It can be seen that distilled water gives low recovery, brine gives good recovery, ethanol gives good recovery while the effect of diesel appears good.6. Caution should be used when using nanoparticles dispersed in brine and ethanol for EOR or for solving other problems in the formation because most of these nanoparticles can impact negatively on oil recovery.

Case III(Berea sandstone)

In this study Low-permeability water-wet Berea sandstones core-plugs with porosity ranged 13-15% and permeability ranged 5-20 mD were tested.A hydrophilic silica nanoparticles with primary particle size 7 nm was employed without surface treatment. Nanofluids with various concentration ranged 0.01 - 0.1 wt.% were synthesized with synthetic saline water for optimizing study. The wettability alteration due to Nanofluids was observed; coreflood experiment was conducted and compared its displacement efficiency.

Case III

Case III

The results observed a range of Nanofluids concentration that could maximize oil recovery in low-permeability water-wet Berea sandstone. Although contact angle of aqueous phase decreases as Nanofluids concentration increase which means easier of oil to be released but we observed that higher concentration (e.g. 0.1 wt.%) has a tendency to block pore network and will decrease or even without additional oil recovery

Fine migration a new ideaFormation damage due to fine migration is one of destructive side-effects of some EOR techniques which may also find solutions from Nanotechnological viewpoints. Fines loosely attached to the pore surface are in the equilibrium with the pore fluids. These particles start to flow when the equilibrium state is disturbed by the EOR agent which, may end up in permeability reduction in porous media. Different solutions have been suggested to prevent detachment of fines from surface such as ionic clay stabilizer, polymers and resins. Nanofluids containing metal oxide nanoparticles show specific properties.Nanofluids that contain nanoparticles (MgO, Sio2, and Al2O3) show specific properties such as high tendency for adsorption and good candidate for the injection into the near wellbore regions because of their very small sizes. Hence the study of interactions between fines and pore surfaces and investigating the governing forces are important issues to describe the mechanism of this process. The main types of these forces are electric double layer repulsion and London-van der Waals attraction. It is possible to change these forces by the use of nanoparticles as surface coatings. Nanoparticles increase the effect of attraction forces in comparison with repulsion forces. Based on extensive experimental works, the magnitude of the electric double layer repulsion in comparison with the London-van der Waals attraction between fines and media grain particles was considerably diminished when MgO nanoparticle was used to coat the porous media resulting in fine fixation.

Sources: Luky Hendraningrat, Shidong Li and Ole Torsæter “Enhancing Oil Recovery of

Low-Permeability Berea Sandstone through Optimized Nanofluids Concentration “ July 2013

Abdelrahman Ibrahim El-Diasty” Applications of Nanotechnology in the Oil & Gas Industry: Latest Trends Worldwide & Future Challenges in Egypt “April 2013

A. Khezrnejad, L.A. James, and T.E. Johansen” Water Enhancement Using Nanoparticles in Water Alternating Gas (WAG) Micromodel Experiments” 2014

N.A. Ogolo, O.A. Olafuyi, and M.O. Onyekonwu” Enhanced Oil Recovery Using Nanoparticles”April 2014

Shahab Ayatollahi, Mohammad M. Zerafat” Nanotechnology-Assisted EOR Techniques: New Solutions to Old Challenges “June 2012

A.J.P. Fletcher, Parr Systems Pty. Ltd., and J.P. Davis” How EOR Can be Transformed by Nanotechnology “April 2010

Mohamed Haroun, Saeed Al Hassan, Arsalan Ansari, Nabeela Al Kindy, Nada Abou Sayed, Basma Ali, Hemanta Sarma” Smart Nano-EOR Process for Abu Dhabi Carbonate Reservoirs “November 2012

applications of nano technology in enhanced oil recovery

Engineering