Effect of In-Situ Synthesized Cerium Oxide Nanoparticles on Oil Recovery Factor In a Glass Micromodel

Research subject: In situ synthesis of nanoparticles due to greater impact on production mechanisms (such as reducing oil viscosity), uniform distribution of nanoparticles in reservoir fluids, no reduction in formation permeability due to no injection of nanofluids into the reservoir and also economic efficiency is more importance than other nanoparticle synthesis methods which are used in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes.
Research approach: In this study, the effect of in-situ synthesized of cerium oxide (CeO2) nanoparticles at low temperature on the oil recovery factor was investigated. For this purpose, water was considered as the based fluid for dispersion of synthesized nanoparticles. Also, in order to study the effect of nanoparticles concentration in the base fluid on the final oil recovery factor, several nanofluids were prepared at different concentrations of 0.01, 0.1, 0.25 and 0.5 wt.%. Finally, the prepared nanofluids were injected at the injection rate of 0.07 ml/h up to 1 PV into the micromodel and the amount of produced oil and the movement of the injected fluid in the porous medium were analyzed.
Main

The results showed that the synthesized CeO2 nanoparticles in this study have appropriate performance to improve the oil recovery factor. The presence of small amounts of these nanoparticles (concentration of 0.01 wt. %), causes a significant increment in oil recovery factor (about 7%) compared to water injection alone. Also, the oil extraction coefficient increased by increasing the concentration of nanoparticles in the base fluid. So that for nanofluids with concentrations of 0.01, 0.1, 0.25 and 0.5 wt.%, the oil recovery factor were 25%, 38%, 43% and 45%, respectively. However, by increasing the concentration of nanoparticles in the base fluid, from an optimal amount onwards, the probability of particle deposition in the micromodel increased, the effect of nanoparticles on changing the hydrodynamic properties of the injected fluid and oil production mechanisms decreased.