Nano Augumented Biosurfactant Formulation for Oil Recovery in Medium Oil Reservoirs

Production from most oil field using waterflooding has proven not to produce residual oil due to numerous factors. Several recovery mechanisms have been applied which to an extent has its own influence both on the environment, percentage recovery and also the cost of purchase. In this blending process the bio-surfactant derived from jatropha oil at different concentrations were augmented with nanoparticles for core flooding experiment. A blend of Bio-surfactant and nanoparticles (B-NPs) is a dual purpose recovery mechanism which alters surface wettability, improves fluid mobility, solubility improvement and stabilizes the foam and emulsions formed. At the surface of the nanoparticle, a single layer is formed by the bio-surfactant which is an electrostatic based interaction given rise to particles that are oil loving. Encouraged greatly by electrostatic interactions, the surfactant will then become a monolayer on the nanoparticle surface, resulting in more hydrophobic particles. The impact of the various particle sizes will be considered to analyze to stability of each BNPs concentration for residual oil recovery. During the laboratory core flooding experiment on Berea cores, the results shows that the nanoparticle-stabilized emulsions increased the oil recovery rate by 8% after water flooding and reduction in the interfacial tension was at the minimum approximately 25 to 1 mN/m.