Enhanced Oil Recovery of Medium Crude Oil (310 Api) Using Nanoparticles and Polymer

The aim of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is to influence the
fluid-fluid properties and fluid-rock properties between the
injected fluid and the residual oil phase to improve recovery
efficiency. New methods of improving recoveries have been
investigated since they provide lower risks, costs and
uncertainty as compared to exploring for new reserves. Water
enhanced with nanoparticles (nano-fluid) has recently gained
research interest for enhanced oil recovery because of the
possible physical and chemical properties imparted by the
nanoparticles. The purpose of this research was to investigate
and improve oil recovery after water flooding by nanofluid
flooding. Nanoparticle used was silica nanoparticles (SiO2)
suspended in deionized water at 0.05wt% concentrations. The
results from the core samples show an additional oil recovery
of 4.29%, 2.022% and 1.86% respectively from three (3) cores
(core 2, core 5 and core 6) at nano flooding rate of 0.5cc/min.
Core 7 gave a recovery of 33% during water flooding and
38.2% during nano-fluid flooding thus giving an incremental
recovery of 5.2%. These results have validated the
effectiveness of chemical flooding especially nanoparticles to
successfully recover crude oil from reservoirs after water
flooding usefulness has declined.