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 (0-0.05 wt. %) was assessed through contact angle measurements. Results from the experiments showed ZrO2 nanofluid have great potentials in changing oil-wet limestone towards strongly water-wet condition. The best performance was observed at 0.05wt% ZrO2 nanoparticle concentration which changed an originally strongly oil-wet (152°) calcite substrate towards a strongly water-wet (44°) state thus we conclude that ZrO2 is a good agent for enhanced oil recovery.
In this work, metal oxides nanostructures, mainly, copper oxide (CuO), nickel oxide (NiO), titanium dioxide (TiO2), and multilayer structure were synthesized by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The structural purity and nanoparticle size of the prepared nanostructures were determined. The individual metal oxide samples (CuO, NiO and TiO2) showed high structural purity and minimum particle sizes of 34, 44, 61 nm, respectively. As well, the multilayer structure showed high structural purity as no elements or compounds other than the three oxides were founds in the final sample while the minimum particle size was 18 nm. This reduction in nanoparticle size can be considered as an advantage for the dc reactive magnetron sputtering tec
... Show MoreFor the first time Iron tungstate semiconductor oxides films (FeWO4) was successfully synthesized simply by advanced controlled chemical spray pyrolysis technique, via employed double nozzle instead of single nozzle using tungstic acid and iron nitrate solutions at three different compositions and spray separately at same time on heated silicone (n-type) substrate at 600 °C, followed by annealing treatment for one hour at 500 °C. The crystal structure, microstructure and morphology properties of prepared films were studied by X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD), electron Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) respectively. According to characterization techniques, a material of well-crystallized monoclinic ph
... Show MoreCadmium oxide thin films were prepared by D.C magnetron plasma sputtering using different voltages (700, 800, 900, 1000, 1100 and 1200) Volt. The Cadmium oxide structural properties using XRD analysis for just a voltage of 1200 volt at room temperature after annealing in different temperatures (523 and 623) K were studied .The results show that the films prepared at room temperature have some peaks belong to cadmium element along the directions (002), (100), (102) and (103) while the other peaks along the directions of (111), (200) and (222) belong to cadmium oxide. Annealed samples display only cadmium oxide peaks. Also, the spectroscopic properties of plasma diagnostic for CdO thin films were determined and the results show that the el
... Show MoreZinc oxide thin films were deposited by chemical spray pyrolysis onto glass substrates which are held at a temperature of 673 K. Some structural, electrical, optical and gas sensing properties of films were studied. The resistance of ZnO thin film exhibits a change of magnitude as the ambient gas is cycled from air to oxygen and nitrogen dioxide
Ceramics type Yttrium oxide with Silicon carbide. were selected to investigate its sintered density, microstructure and electrical properties, after adding V2O5, of 100 nm grain size. Different weight percentages ranging from (0.01,0.02,0.03 and 0.04) were used. Dry milling applied for twelve hours. The pelletized samples were sintered at atmospheric of static air and at sintering temperature 1400 ˚C, for three hours. The crustal structure test shoes the phase which is yttrium silicon carbide Scanning electron microscopy, scan sintered microstructure. Samples after sintering were electrically investigated by measuring its capacitance, dielectric constant and their results showed increasing after added V2O5 particles at the combinat
... Show MoreSpray pyrolysis technique (SPT) is employed to synthesize cadmium oxide nanostructure with 3% and 5% Cobalt concentrations. Films are deposited on a glass substrate at 350 ᵒC with 150 nm thickness. The XRD analysis revealed a polycrystalline nature with cubic structure and (111) preferred orientation. Structural parameters represent lattice spacing, crystallite size, lattice parameter and dislocation density. Homogeneous surfaces and regular distribution of atoms were showed by atomic force microscope (AFM) with 1.03 nm average roughness and 1.22 nm root mean square roughness. Optical properties illustrated a high transmittance more than 85% in the range of visible spectrum and decreased with Co concentration increasing. The absorption
... Show MoreThe adsorption of Malonic acid, Succinic acid, Adipic acid, and Azelaic acid from their aqueous solutions on zinc oxide surface were investigated. The adsorption efficiency was investigated using various factors such as adsorbent amount, contact time, initial concentration, and temperature. Optimum conditions for acids removal from its aqueous solutions were found to be adsorbent dose (0.2 g), equilibrium contact time (40 minutes), initial acids concentration (0.005 M). Variation of temperature as a function of adsorption efficiency showed that increasing the temperature would result in decreasing the adsorption ability. Kinetic modeling by applying the pseudo-second order model can provide a better fit of the data with a greater correla
... Show MoreIn this study, Cobalt Oxide nanostructure was successfully prepared using the chemical spray pyrolysis technique. The cobalt oxide phase was analysed by X-ray Diffraction (XRD) and proved the preparation of two cobalt oxide phases which are Co3O4 and CoO phases. The surface morphology was characterized by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) images showing the topography of the sample with grain size smaller than 100 nm. The optical behavior of the prepared material was studied by UV-Vis spectrophotometer. The band gap varied as 1.9 eV and 2.6 eV for Co3O4 prepared from cobalt sulphate precursor, 2.03 eV and 4.04 eV for Co3O4 prepared from cobalt nitrate precursor, 2.04 eV and 4.01 eV for CoO prepared from cobalt chloride precursor where th
... Show MoreAbstract: Tin oxide thin films were deposited by direct current (DC) reactive sputtering at gas pressures of 0.015 mbar – 0.15 mbar. The crystalline structure and surface morphology of the prepared SnO2 films were introduced by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). These films showed preferred orientation in the (110) plane. Due to AFM micrographs, the grain size increased non-uniformly as the working gas pressure increased.