Experimental Investigation of Chemical Flooding Using Nanoparticles and Polymer on Displacement of Crude Oil for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Abstract

In the petroleum industry, the researchers have developed a new technique called enhanced oil recovery to recover the remaining oil in reservoirs. Some reservoirs are very complex and require advanced enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques containing new materials and additives in order to produce maximum oil in economic and environmental friendly manners. In this work, the effects of nanosuspensions (KY-200) and polymer gel HPAM (854) on oil recovery and water cut were studied in the view of EOR techniques and their results were compared. The mechanism of nanosuspensions transportation through the sand pack was also discussed. The adopted methodology involved the preparation of gel, viscosity test, and core flooding experiments. The optimum concentration of nanosuspensions after viscosity tests was used for displacement experiments and 3 wt % concentration of nanosuspensions amplified the oil recovery. In addition, high concentration leads to more agglomeration; thus, high core plugging takes place and diverts the fluid flow towards unswept zones to push more oil to produce and decrease the water cut. Experimental results indicate that nanosuspensions have the ability to plug the thief zones of water channeling and can divert the fluid flow towards unswept zones to recover the remaining oil from the reservoir excessively rather than the normal polymer gel flooding. The injection pressure was observed higher during nanosuspension injection than polymer gel injection. The oil recovery was achieved by about 41.04% from nanosuspensions, that is, 14.09% higher than polymer gel. Further investigations are required in the field of nanoparticles applications in enhanced oil recovery to meet the world's energy demands.