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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of process parameters including silica nanoparticle (NP) concentration, biosurfactant (BS) concentration, and salinity as well as their synergistic effects on oil recovery in simultaneous flooding. Additionally, the effect of NP morphology (in the BS-NP solution) on oil recovery was investigat...
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The purpose of this research is to look into the augmentation of silica nanoparticles (NPs) with low salinity (LowSal) brine for EOR. A series of analyses, including oil/water interfacial tension (IFT) and rock wettability tests were undertaken to determine an optimal dispersion to flood into a porous carbonate core with a defined pore size distrib...
This study explored the feasibility of biosurfactant amendment in modifying the interfacial characteristics of carbon dioxide (CO 2) with rock minerals under high-pressure conditions for GCS. In particular, while varying the CO 2 phase and the rock mineral, we quantitatively examined the production of biosurfactants by Bacillus subtilis and their e...
The underlying effect of preflush salinity and silica nanofluid (Si-NF) on oil production is examined. The influence of salinity on the stability of Si-NFs is studied. A series of sand-pack floodings evaluating oil production was conducted at different concentrations of preflush salinity (0 to 4 wt.%), followed by the injection of a Si-NF (0.5 wt.%...
Microbial flooding is a new enhanced‐oil‐recovery technology for the petroleum industry. In this study, a strain of Bacillus subtilis named SL‐2 was isolated from oil‐well‐produced fluid. B. subtilis produces the lipopeptide surfactin. The fermentation broth of B. subtilis contains lipopeptide biosurfactants (1.2 g/L) with good surface and interfac...
This study reports the size-dependent interactions of silica nanoparticle (NP) dispersions with oil, which facilitate oil recovery from sandstone rock. Herein, we studied various 7–22 nm sized colloidal silica NPs (CSNPs; the colloidal state when dispersed in aqueous solutions) and fumed silica nanoparticles (FSNPs; the dry powder state). Interfaci...
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... Optimization of surfactants and nanoparticles appears to have vast potential in improving oil recovery. The synergies of surfactants and nanoparticles in nanofluids generally involve wettability modification to water-wet, IFT reduction, reduction of oil viscosity, and increased stability [6], [15]. In addition, the synergism between surfactants and nanoparticles is a promising approach as it can overcome the limitations of each injection system. ...
... When combined with nanomaterials to form a multifunctional oil displacement system, 25−27 many studies have shown that the synergistic effect of nanoparticles and surfactants can greatly improve crude oil recovery. 28 Compared with the polymer chemical flooding used in the traditional EOR process, the bio-nano flooding system can lead to some small pores that cannot be entered by the traditional flooding medium due to the smaller particle size of the bionanoparticles. NPs can easily pass through the porous medium without reducing the formation permeability. ...
... This result suggested that there was a positive synergistic effect between the biosurfactants and bio-nanoparticles. 28 Due to the stability of biosurfactants, the number of bio-nanoparticles that spontaneously diffuse to and adsorb at the oil−water interface can be increased. 34,35 Therefore, compared with biosurfactants and iron nanofluids, the bio-nano-oil displacement system exhibited better interfacial activity, which could more effectively eliminate interfacial interaction and reduce interfacial tension. ...
Nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted great attention in the tertiary oil recovery process due to their unique properties. As an economical and efficient green synthesis method, biosynthesized nanoparticles have the advantages of low toxicity, fast preparation, and high yield. In this study, with the theme of biotechnology, for the first time, the bio-nanoparticles reduced by iron-reducing bacteria were compounded with the biosurfactant produced by Bacillus to form a stable bio-nano flooding system, revealing the oil flooding mechanism and enhanced oil recovery (EOR) potential of the bio-nano flooding system. The interfacial properties of the bio-nano-oil displacement system were studied by interfacial tension and wettability change experiments. The enhanced oil recovery potential of the bio-nano-oil displacement agent was measured by microscopic oil displacement experiments and core flooding experiments. The bio-nano-oil displacement system with different nanoparticle concentrations can form a stable dispersion system. The oil-water interfacial tension and contact angle decreased with the increase in concentration of the bio-nano flooding system, which also has a high salt tolerance. Microscopic oil displacement experiments proved the efficient oil displacement of the bio-nano-oil displacement system and revealed its main oil displacement mechanism. The effects of concentration and temperature on the recovery of the nano-biological flooding system were investigated by core displacement experiments. The results showed that the recovery rate increased from 4.53 to 15.26% with the increase of the concentration of the system. The optimum experimental temperature was 60 °C, and the maximum recovery rate was 15.63%.
... This design allows the response to be modeled by a secondorder polynomial equation which enables estimation of the main, quadratic, and interactive results of the factors on the studied attributes. It should be noted that the range of surfactant concentration was selected to consist of CMC concentration of surfactants while nanoparticles concentration range covered the previous studies [56][57][58]. ...
Although various surface active agents have been proposed, there is still no straightforward and clear understanding of the effect of cationic imidazolium-based ionic liquid (IL), twin-branched tailed anionic surfactant, and a non-ionic emulsifier in the presence of SiO2 nanoparticle and amphiphilic oleic components on the interfacial tension (IFT) reduction. So, in this work, the performance of cationic imidazolium-based IL ([C12mim][Cl], anionic surfactant (AOT)), and non-ionic surfactant (Tween 80) on the IFT value were studied through the design of experiment approach and the response surface method. Experiments were designed using a face-centered composite design (FCCD) with the independent variables of surfactant concentration (175–525 ppm) and nanoparticle concentration (25–75 ppm) as numerical ones, and surfactant type and synthetic oil (8 wt% of asphaltene and resin fractions dissolved in heptol (mixture of n-heptane: toluene with the volume ratio of 30:70)) with various volume ratios of asphaltene to resin (1:0, 2:1, 1:1, and 1:2) as categorical ones. According to the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and 156 measured IFT experimental data points, the effects of each factor were evaluated. As a result, the suggested quadratic model with R² (0.9986) and adjusted R² (0.9984) values indicated that the fitted model can accurately predict the response variable (IFT) values. The best performance (lower IFT and critical micelle concentration) was obtained for [C12mim][Cl] without being affected by the amphiphilic nature of asphaltene and resin fractions and the concentration of SiO2 nanoparticles. The appropriate surface activity of IL was attributed to the effective polar head group of imidazolium and the presence of nitrogen in the aromatic ring.
... A factor that is also associated with the bioavailability of hydrocarbons in this type of treatment is salinity. A study by Khademolhosseini et al. (2019) pointed out that the presence of salt ions attracts water molecules, causing the biosurfactant to appear at the interface. A high amount of salt in the medium can decrease the emulsifying activity, as the bioavailability of hydrocarbons presents a tolerance between 10-15% of salinity in the medium that is accessed by biosurfactants (HENTATI et al., 2021). ...
The purpose of this work was to propose sustainable solutions for advanced oil recovery by evaluating the ability of the bacterium Pseudomonas sp. in the biotransformation of alkanes, in addition to determining strain growth patterns under extreme conditions. For this, the work was initially carried out under laboratory conditions, in which the crude oil was fractionated to obtain the saturated fraction used in the experiment. The bacterial tolerance to salinity and temperature was also tested to determine the experimental conditions and set up the experiment in regard to these parameters. Additionally, an experiment was performed to produce a biosurfactant through biostimulation. The biotransformation experiment consisted of a triplicate with treatment and a control. For treatments, Erlenmeyers flasks received 100 mL of broth containing the biosurfactant, 10 g (10%) of NaCl, 3% of the strain and 1% of the saturated fraction. Erlenmeyer flasks were incubated at 40 °C and 180 rpm for 18 days with periodic analysis. The results initially showed the bacteria exhibited better tolerance at a temperature of 40 °C, and there was no significant change for the different salinities, which was a nonlimiting parameter. For the final experiment, the bacterial growth analysed by Optical Density (OD). exhibited a low variation, in which the lowest point was in T18 with an absorbance of 0.115 and the highest point was in T6 with an absorbance of 0.149. In the qPCR analysis of the bacterial population, the pattern found was similar to the optical density results, with low variation; the lowest number of copies of the 16S rRNA gene (6.66x 103) was found in T0 and the highest number was found in T12 (7.86x 103). For biotransformation analysis, time 6 was observed to have the highest rate, with 54% oil recovery (C30), followed by 52% (C31) and 51% (C29).
... Finally, according to the investigation of Khademolhosseini et al. (2019b), high uniformity of spherical NPs led to better distribution and more efficient interactions with crude oil components, which increased recovery. Furthermore, in the coreflooding test, they noticed that the biosurfactant-spherical NP solution produced 26.1% more oil recovery after brine flooding than the biosurfactant-sponge-like NP solution (25.1%). ...
Most oil fields today are mature, and the majority of the reservoirs in the Middle East are carbonate rocks characterized by high temperature high salinity (HTHS), heterogeneous mineral composition, and natural fractures. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods are used for boosting oil recovery from the aged reservoirs beyond primary and secondary recovery stages. Nevertheless, it can be a challenging task to employ EOR techniques in these aged carbonate reservoirs. This is because carbonate reservoirs have mixed-to-oil-wet wettability with temperatures exceeding 85 °C and salinity of over 100,000 ppm, which renders secondary EOR-methods such as waterflooding ineffective. Therefore, even though carbonate reservoirs contain 60–65% of world's remaining oil, with immense intrinsic economic prospects, the oil recovery process from carbonate reservoirs remains a considerable challenge. Chemical-EOR (cEOR) techniques, like SP based cEOR, have shown marked promise in improved oil recovery, mainly from clastic reservoirs with medium temperature and salinity, unlike carbonate reservoirs. During SP-floodings, the surfactants get adsorbed due to the mineral composition of the carbonate rocks, and polymer degradation occurs due to HTHS conditions. Consequently, new surfactants and polymers have been structurally conformed and tested to improve their robustness and related recovery efficacy. For instance, Guerbet alkoxy-carboxylate surfactants demonstrated good stability at temperatures over 100 °C and salinities up-to 275,000 ppm, yielding tertiary recovery of 94.5% and low adsorption of 0.086 mg/g of rock. The cationic Gemini surfactants, zwitterionic or amphoteric class of surfactants are also suitable for HTHS carbonates. Besides, effective biosurfactants sourced from plant such as, soy, corn, etc., are non-toxic and readily biodegradable. The hydrophobically associating polyacrylamide (HAPAM) and its modified nanocomposite derivative can act as replacement surfactants, due to their wettability altering and robust characteristics. Novel polymers viz., NVP-based, novel smart thermoviscosifying polymers (TVP), soft microgel, and sulfonated polymers, are also relevant to HTHS carbonate applications. Xanthan gum, scleroglucan, and schizophyllan biopolymers have been noted to resist HTHS and low permeability conditions, requiring lower concentration and having low adsorption. Recent surfactant-polymer (SP) formulations also can be applicable for HTHS carbonates with excellent ternary recoveries (93.6%) and minimal retention (0.083 μg/g of rock). Such low retention values suggest low surfactants cost with minimal environmental impact. Moreover, several successful field applications in carbonates were conducted in preceding years; however, the performance of some novel surfactants under HTHS carbonates is yet to be fully understood. Hence, this comprehensive review aims to provide renewed perspectives on surfactant and polymer optimizations for field applications in HTHS carbonates. A list of recommendations is presented as guidelines for efficient SP-flooding designs. This critical literature appraisal furnishes an array of potential manifestations for successful field application of SP-flooding in HTHS carbonates, which holds both economic and environmental feasibility.
... A similar study with a customized glass-etched micromodel used for oil recovery reveals that NPs of the nanofluid interact more strongly with a solid−liquid system than with a liquid− liquid system. 38,39 Khademolhosseini et al. 40 reported that oil recovery in the microfluidic device due to the synergistic effect of the biosurfactant and the spherical-shaped silica NPs is more than that with the biosurfactant and any other shape (spongelike, rod-like, mixed spherical−rod-like) silica NPs. This indicates that uniform spherical silica NPs have a more significant impact on oil recovery than any other shape of silica NPs. ...
... However, very limited research is found where two of the said methods are used and the oil recovery results compared. 40,43 The actual efficiency and optimum composition of the injection fluid can be well understood if the recovery experiment is carried out with various modes adopting multiple methodologies using the same injection fluid. In the present study, the microfluidic setup has been used for a pore-scale investigation and performance evaluation of SMART LowSal flooding for enhanced oil recovery from mature reservoirs using a lab-on-a-chip. ...
... There has been significant research interest in the synergistic effects of anionic, cationic, and non-ionic surfactants with NPs in EOR application (He et al., 2021;Khademolhosseini et al., 2019;Pal et al., 2019;Zhong et al., 2019). The surfactant -NPs systems have acquired much attention, due to high IFT reduction, better stability, lower NPs dose, reduced surfactant adsorption loss, and improved efficiency (Almahfood and Bai, 2018). ...
... Such high reduction is crucial for microscopic displacement in reservoir rocks. Similar trends were also observed by other researchers such as Almahfood and Bai (2018), Khademolhosseini et al. (2019), and Lan et al., (2007). ...
Enhanced oil recovery techniques are commonly used today in oil fields to boost oil production. The objective of the present study is to investigate the use of silica nanoparticles (NPs) with surfactants and polymers to increase the oil recovery from oil fields. Synergistic effects of surfactant, polymer, and nanoparticles on interfacial tension
(IFT) reduction, wettability alteration, emulsification, and viscosity improvement are reported in this study. Core flooding experiments were performed in cores with different permeabilities to screen the reservoir on basis of rock properties. The dispersion of NPs in the aqueous solution of surfactant and polymer was characterized by stability analysis, Turbiscan analysis, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and zeta-potential measurements. The
nanoparticles were able to further reduce the IFT between the surfactant solution and crude oil. The stability of nanofluids was increased when surfactant was added as evidenced by a higher zeta potential value ( 39.6 mV). The addition of polymer led to even higher stability of the nanofluids as observed by the Turbiscan analyzer. A synergistic effect of NPs, surfactant, and polymer was observed in the core flooding experiments. The nanofluid system provided higher incremental oil recovery in high permeability core as compared to low permeability core. Different recovery mechanisms responsible for oil recovery by nanofluids like wettability alteration, disjoining pressure, log jamming, and pore channel plugging phenomena are discussed. The flooding results indicate that the injection of the designed slug increases the oil recovery up to 28% of the original oil in place after conventional water flooding. Therefore, the findings of this study can help for a better understanding of the use of silica NPs with surfactant and polymer as a chemical EOR agent. The result also helps in the screening of sandstone reservoirs where nanofluid could be employed.
... Salt tolerance in biosurfactants is up to 10%, where synthetic surfactants become inactive at just 2% NaCl concentration (Santos et al., 2016). The presence of salt ions in the aqueous medium attracts the water molecular, which creates an environment leading to the movement of biosurfactant molecules to the interface (Khademolhosseini et al., 2019). Micro-organisms and their surface-active products survive in high saline concentration by salt-in-cytoplasm and other osmoregulatory mechanisms. ...
Fossil fuels such as petroleum resources continue to be a significant fraction of the energy portfolio. Oil sludge or slops have become an unavoidable waste in the petroleum industries, and their improper disposal measures have led to environmental pollution. Various conventional and traditional practices for disposal and recovery are practiced, but the efficiency of MEOR has led to more promising and efficient ways to recover oil from oil reservoirs and waste sludges. Among the microbial bioactives, biosurfactants are the key players in the whole process. Although, MEOR using biosurfactants has been largely practiced for recovering oil from oil reservoirs, microbial metabolites are also proving to be effective in recovering oil from the waste oily sludges generated as a part of the petroleum production cycle. MEOR stands out as a economically sound alternative over other conventional methods that require large capital investment, heavy energy consumption and varying recovery efficiency. This review describes the scope of MEOR to be useful in reducing and reusing the waste oily sludge accumulation that when untreated causes environmental pollution, allowing sustainable use of natural resources. However, lack of reproducibility at field scale, large scale production of bioactive compounds are the major reasons leading to its incompatibility. The review aims to address the gaps and possible strategies to help speed up the efficiency by thoroughly focusing on the biosurfactant mediated MEOR process dynamics and use of various non-renewable substrates as measure of waste utilization for the production of metabolites. The molecular makeup of these significant molecules after extracting them from the contaminated niche will help discover microbial diversity. Furthermore, the limitations to this biosurfactant assisted MEOR can be solved by using genomic and high throughput approaches to execute an economical implementation at field scale level.
... Surfactants emulsify the crude oil in the formation by injecting fluid to form an emulsion, which will squeeze and deform when passing through the pore throats to increase the flow resistance of the water channel [13][14][15]. Surfactants are usually used with a strong gel system to avoid the tendency for channeling [16][17][18][19]. Previous studies show that the current selection and evaluation of plugging agents are primarily based on core displacement experiments, with pressure drop (resistance coefficient, residual resistance coefficient) as the evaluation benchmark. ...
Novel profile control agents are constantly emerging in the field of enhanced oil recovery, contributing to the extension of a stable production period. However, evaluation performed through conventional core flow experiments is usually inadequate to reveal the in-depth mechanism of profile control agents. Besides, due to different operation and production modes, there is an urgent need for a specific experimental method applicable to horizontal wells in bottom water reservoirs. In this context, this paper describes two models tailored to bottom water reservoirs and investigates the flow characteristics and mechanisms of three water-shutoff agent types. At the pore scale, further study was carried out on the water-shutoff synergism between a gel and an emulsifier. The results show that the gel is present at the edge of the pore body, while the emulsion is blocked in the center of the pore body. Hence, gel that enters a water channel (main flow and accumulation area of emulsion) can cooperate with an emulsion to achieve high-strength water shutoff, making the bottom water that re-invades mainly break through at oil-rich areas. Compared with water shutoff with gel alone (randomly distributed in the breakthrough area), the synergism improves the gel’s ability to select flow channels, inhibits emulsifier channeling, and achieves a remarkable EOR effect.
... Recent studies have shown that nanofluid is an effective EOR agent by reducing the IFT and changing the wettability alteration [45][46][47][48]. Wasan and Nikolov [9] presented the initial conceptual mechanism for wettability alteration due to nanofluid injection. ...
Nanofluid flooding, as a new technique to enhance oil recovery, has recently aroused much attention. The current study considers the performance of a novel iron-carbon nanohybrid to EOR. Carbon nanoparticles was synthesized via the hydrothermal method with citric acid and hybridize with iron (Fe3O4). The investigated nanohybrid is characterized by its rheological properties (viscosity), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) analysis. The efficiency of the synthetized nanoparticle in displacing heavy oil is initially assessed using an oil–wet glass micromodel at ambient conditions. Nanofluid samples with various concentrations (0.05 wt % and 0.5 wt %) dispersed in a water base fluid with varied salinities were first prepared. The prepared nanofluids provide high stability with no additive such as polymer or surfactant. Before displacement experiments were run, to achieve a better understanding of fluid–fluid and grain–fluid interactions in porous media, a series of sub-pore scale tests—including interfacial tension (IFT), contact angle, and zeta potential—were conducted. Nanofluid flooding results show that the nanofluid with the medium base fluid salinity and highest nanoparticle concertation provides the highest oil recovery. However, it is observed that increasing the nanofluid concentration from 0.05% to 0.5% provided only three percent more oil. In contrast, the lowest oil recovery resulted from low salinity water flooding. It was also observed that the measured IFT value between nanofluids and crude oil is a function of nanofluid concentration and base fluid salinities, i.e., the IFT values decrease with the increase of nanofluid concentration and base fluid salinity reduction. However, the base fluid salinity enhancement leads to wettability alteration towards more water-wetness. The main mechanisms responsible for oil recovery enhancement during nanofluid flooding is mainly attributed to wettability alteration toward water-wetness and micro-dispersion formation. However, the interfacial tension (IFT) reduction using the iron-carbon nanohybrid is also observed but the reduction is not significant.
