NANOPARTICLES TRANSPORT THROUGH POROUS MEDIA FOR ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY

Application of nanoparticles is envisaged for enhanced oil recovery applications because of their unique transport and surface wettability properties along with their relatively small sizes compared to the size of pores in porous rocks of an oil reservoir. In the current work stable, dilute dispersion (20 ppm by weight) of the spherical shaped, negatively charged functionalized carbon nanoparticles of different sizes (5 nm, 50 nm) and spherical shaped, neutrally charged polymer grafted silica nanoparticles (35 nm) were injected through the sandstones and carbonates cores (with permeabilities ranging from 2 mD to 400 mD). The pressure profiles and breakthrough curves were obtained and the fluorescence microscopy on the rock surface was performed. The early breakthrough occurred in most cases and retention of nanoparticles in the porous media was found to be dependent upon the pore – nanoparticle relative sizes and temperature.Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Department o