An Experimental Investigation of Polysilicon Nanoparticles’ Recovery Efficiencies through Changes in Interfacial Tension and Wettability Alteration

Abstract

Abstract New technologies are emerging oil industry to afford the need for increasing oil recovery from oilfields, one of which is Nanotechnology. This paper experimentally investigates a special type of Nanoparticles named Polysilicon ones which are very promising materials to be used in near future for enhanced oil recovery. There are three types of Polysilicon Nanoparticles which can be used according the reservoir wettability conditions. In this paper, hydrophobic and lipophilic polysilicon (HLP) and naturally wet polysilicon (NWP) are investigated as EOR agents in water-wet sandstone rocks. These two Nanoparticles recover additional oil through major mechanisms of interfacial tension reduction and wettability alteration. The impact of these two Nanoparticle types on water-oil interfacial tension and the contact angle developed between oil and the rock surface in presence of water phase were investigated. Then, several coreflood experiments were conducted to study their impacts directly on recoveries. Furthermore, optimum pore-volume injection of each Nano-fluid was determined according the pressure drop across the core samples. The results show a change toward less water-wet condition and a drastic decrease in oil-water interfacial tension from 26.3 mN/m to 1.75 mN/m and 2.55 mN/m after application of HLP and NWP Nano-fluids respectively. As a result, oil recoveries increase by 32.2% and 28.57% when a 4 gr/lit concentration of HLP and NWP Nano fluids are injected into the core samples respectively. According the differential pressure data, two and three pore-volume injections of NWP and HLP Nano-fluids are the best injection volumes respectively. Finally, HLP and NWP Nanoparticles improve oil recovery without inducing any formation damage according the oil recovery and pressure drop data.