The petroleum industry faces a significant problem in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) from carbonate reservoirs because of their mostly oil-wet character, which restricts hydrocarbon extraction. To better understand how surfactant-polymer techniques can enhance oil recovery, this study investigates the effectiveness of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a stand-alone agent and the function of ionically modified smart water on carbonate properties. The study focuses on its effect on critical parameters essential for effective oil displacement and recovery, such as wettability alteration, interfacial tension, and surface tension (ST) using different brines (smart water). The ability of the polymer PVA to lower interfacial and surface tensi

Changing oil-wet surfaces toward higher water wettability is of key importance in subsurface engineering applications. This includes petroleum recovery from fractured limestone reservoirs, which are typically mixed or oil-wet, resulting in poor productivity as conventional waterflooding techniques are inefficient. A wettability change toward more water-wet would significantly improve oil displacement efficiency, and thus productivity. Another area where such a wettability shift would be highly beneficial is carbon geo-sequestration, where compressed CO2 is pumped underground for storage. It has recently been identified that more water-wet formations can store more CO2. We thus examined how silica based nanofluids can induce such a wettabil

This work was conducted to study limestone rock wettability alteration to enhance oil recovery by flooding using different Nano silica (NS) sizes suspended in saline water and compared with flooding solution of polyethylene glycol (PEG) polymer and sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) surfactant, the stability of nanofluids measured by zeta potential. In the flooding system, the secondary recovery by silica nanofluids (0.01 wt. % NS concentration) achieved an oil recovery of 35vol. % and 26.08 vol. % for 10, 52 nm after primary recovery respectively, while PEG polymer and SDS surfactant achieved oil recovery of 5 vol. % and 10 vol. % only respectively. The stability of pressure difference approved that silica nanoparticle never causes any p

Nanofluids, liquid suspensions of nanoparticles (NPs) dispersed in deionized (DI) water, brine, or surfactant micelles, have become a promising solution for many industrial applications including enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and carbon geostorage. At ambient conditions, nanoparticles can effectively alter the wettability of the strongly oil-wet rocks to water-wet. However, the reservoir conditions present the greatest challenge for the success of this application at the field scale. In this work, the performance of anionic surfactant-silica nanoparticle formulation on wettability alteration of oil-wet carbonate surface at reservoir conditions was investigated. A high-pressure temperature vessel was used to apply nano-modification of oil-wet

Nanofluid treatment of oil reservoirs is being developed to enhance oil recovery and increase residual trapping capacities of CO2 at the reservoir scale. Recent studies have demonstrated good potential for silica nanoparticles for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) at ambient conditions. Nanofluid composition and exposure time have shown significant effects on the efficiency of EOR. However, there is a serious lack of information regarding the influence of temperature on nanofluid performance; thus the effects of temperature, exposure time and particle size on wettability alteration of oil-wet calcite surface were comprehensively investigated; moreover, the stability of the nanofluids was examined. We found that nanofluid treatment is more efficie

Ultimate oil recovery and displacement efficiency at the pore-scale are controlled by the rock wettability thus there is a growing interest in the wetting behaviour of reservoir rocks as production from fractured oil-wet or mixed-wet limestone formations have remained a key challenge. Conventional waterflooding methods are inefficient in such formation due to poor spontaneous imbibition of water into the oil-wet rock capillaries. However, altering the wettability to water-wet could yield recovery of significant amounts of additional oil thus this study investigates the influence of nanoparticles on wettability alteration. The efficiency of various formulated zirconium-oxide (ZrO2) based nanofluids at different nanoparticle concentrations (0