Nanofluid enhanced oil recovery using induced ZnO nanocrystals by electromagnetic energy: Viscosity increment

Extracting the trapped oil in the pores and channels of rock reservoirs, after secondary recovery, using traditional enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques is still a challenging task. Nano-materials offer novel pathways to address these unsolved challenges as EOR agents due to their unique characte...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Fuel (Guildford) 2018-12, Vol.233, p.632-643
Main Authors: Alnarabiji, Mohamad Sahban, Yahya, Noorhana, Nadeem, Saad, Adil, Muhammad, Baig, Mirza Khurram, Ghanem, Ouahid Ben, Azizi, Khairun, Ahmed, Shehzad, Maulianda, Belladonna, Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír, Elraies, Khaled Abdalla
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Channel pores
Crystals
Dielectric properties
Electromagnetics
Electromagnetism
Energy
Energy recovery
Enhanced oil recovery
Flow rates
Irradiation
Local viscosity increment
Nanocrystals
Nanofluids
Oil recovery
pH durability
Porous media
Power efficiency
Recovering
Recovery mechanism
Saline water
Viscosity
Water flooding
Waterflooding experiment
Zinc
Zinc oxide
Zinc oxides
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Extracting the trapped oil in the pores and channels of rock reservoirs, after secondary recovery, using traditional enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques is still a challenging task. Nano-materials offer novel pathways to address these unsolved challenges as EOR agents due to their unique characteristics. This study aimed to investigate the novel use of zinc oxide nanocrystals (ZnO-NCs) in EOR and, investigate the influence of the combination of ZnO-NCs with EM energy irradiation on the recovery efficiency. For this purpose, different nanofluid concentrations and flow rates, as well as brine salinity was injected into the porous medium, in the absence of EM energy, to obtain the optimum experimental conditions with the highest recovery efficiency. The injected nanofluid in the porous medium, under the optimum conditions, was subjected to EM energy. The Zinc oxide nanofluid (ZnO-NF) showed a significant rise in recovery efficiency in the absence of EM energy by 50% ROIP due to the self-assembling of the ZnO-NCs which resulted in an increment in the local viscosity of the nanofluid at the water–oil interface. This study proved the capability of EM energy to enhance the viscosity of the injected ZnO-NF in the porous medium, which consequently increased the recovery efficiency by 23.3% ROIP through the electrorheological effect of the activated dielectric ZnO-NCs.
ISSN:0016-2361
1873-7153
DOI:10.1016/j.fuel.2018.06.068