Jitendra Sangwai

The purpose of the present work is to evaluate applicability of ionanofluids for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) applications. Two different ionanofluids have been prepared for this study by adding silica nanoparticles into two different ionic liquids (tripropyl ammonium sulphate and triethyl ammonium sulphate) solutions. The effects of nanoparticle and ionic liquid on the interfacial tension of crude oil-nanofluid and their enhanced oil recovery performances have been evaluated. Ionanofluids are found to have the ability to reduce the interfacial tension to a significantly low value. The results of this study also indicate that ionanofluids has much higher enhanced oil recovery efficiencies in comparison to nanofluid and ionic liquid alone. Therefore, ionanofluids have the potential to be used as an excellent future EOR agent.

The reduction in interfacial tension (IFT) of paraffin crude oil is of key importance, particularly for oilfield applications such as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Nanoparticle laden suspension such as nanofluid is gaining widespread interest and their use to achieve moderate IFT reduction in paraffin crude oil. In this work, stable nanofluids of an oilfield polymer (polyacrylamide, PAM) with and without surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate, SDS) have been formulated and examined for IFT reduction of paraffin oils such as n-decane, n-hexane, n-pentane, and n-heptane. Nanofluids were also investigated for various studies such as dispersion stability, viscosity, rate of sedimentation (ROS), and DLS based measurements (size and zeta-potential). Other studies involving investigations on surface tension (SFT), IFT reduction, effect of SDS and varying SiO2concentration on IFT reduction, and their efficacy for IFT reduction under high temperature environment have also been reported. The performance of nanofluids for IFT reduction has been compared with IFT results of conventional polymer (P) and surfactant-polymer (SP) methods, which are typically used for chemical-EOR practices. As compared to P and SP methods, IFT value of nanoparticle-polymer (NP) and nanoparticle-surfactant-polymer (NSP) fluids were found to be significantly lower suitable for enhanced oil recovery. In addition, NSP nanofluids provided superior reduction in IFT values mainly due to the presence of SDS. Thus, we conclude that SiO2nanofluid, as compared to P/SP EOR methods, can be a potential alternative to reduce the IFT of paraffin crude oil.