APPLICATION OF NANOTECHNOLOGY IN ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY

Abstract

Responding to the growing demand in the oil industry is possible in two ways: by finding new hydrocarbon resources or by increasing extraction from existing oil reservoirs. Increasing production efficiency by modifying EOR methods is quite obvious while the process of exploring new oil fields is declining and many oil fields are in the final stages of production; Because in many reservoirs of the world about two-thirds of the oil in situ cannot be extracted by conventional methods. Recovery mechanisms in EOR operation can also be enhanced using nanotechnology. Nanotechnology-assisted EOR processes depend on several factors: mobility control using viscosity-increasing solutions, altering the rock wettability, reducing the interfacial tension (IFT), and lowering the oil viscosity using nanocatalysts. The efficiency depends on how the process behaves at both the macro and micro scales. The microscopic efficiency considers the displacement of the fluids at a poral scale and measures how effective the displacing agent is in mobilizing oil and rocks to make contact. In this regard, the geometry of the pores, capillary pressure, viscous forces, rock wettability, and rheological behavior play a major role. The macroscopic efficiency is the relationship between the connected reservoir volume being swept by the injected fluid and the volume of oil originally in the reservoir and parameters affecting this factor are: the rock heterogeneity and its anisotropy, the absolute permeability, the mobility ratio, and the gravitational segregation. Downstream processes such as petroleum refining are employed to extract up to 40% more gasoline in catalytic cracking units than their predecessors. In upstream operations, the first application of nanotechnology was the development of nano-enhanced materials. Nanotechnologically enhanced oil recovery processes involve (a) the addition of nanoparticles in the displacing agent enhancing its rheological properties, which are known as nanofluids; (b) the use of nanoparticles as stabilizing agents in the formation of nanoemulsions; and finally, (c) active nanoparticles working as nanocatalysts injected to perform in-situ upgrading operations in the porous medium before extraction.