Enhancing oil recovery through nanofluids flooding with Irvingia gabonensis in the Niger Delta
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ORIGINAL PAPER-PETROLEUM ENGINEERING
Enhancing oil recovery through nanofluids flooding with Irvingia gabonensis in the Niger Delta J. C. Onyemachi1 · S. I. Onwukwe1 · Ugochukwu Ilozurike Duru1 · A. O. Chikwe1 · N. Uwaezuoke1 Received: 11 March 2020 / Accepted: 6 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Application of nanofluids flooding in the oil and gas industry is recently emerging as enhanced oil recovery methods. Nanoparticles have the ability to alter the rock formation in order to recover oil trapped in the pores of the rock to improve oil recovery. In this study, core plug samples were formulated in the laboratory to investigate the effect of nanoparticles on oil recovery. The formulated core samples were saturated in low salinity brine. However, low salinity brine was used because it has the ability to alter rock wettability. After core flooding with brine for secondary recovery process, extracted oil from Irvingia gabonensis was introduced into the formation to investigate the effect of Irvingia gabonensis on oil recovery. The result of the study showed that magnesium oxide, silicon oxide, aluminum oxide and zinc oxide had oil recovery of 38.1%, 45.6%, 47.7% and 35.1%, respectively. However, when the nanofluids with Irvingia gabonensis were injected into the formation as a displacing agent, the oil recovery greatly improved to 50.3%, 52.0%, 53.2% and 52.4% for (MgO, SiO2, Al2O3 and ZnO). The result of the study showed that nanofluid flooding is a promising potential to improve oil recovery in the Niger Delta. Keywords Magnesium oxide · Silicon oxide · Aluminum oxide · Zinc oxide · Irvingia gabonensis · Nanoparticles · Nanofluids
Introduction Nanoparticles (NP) are usually made up of core and thin shell, and the thin shell is composed of inorganic materials which is different from the core, but the physiochemical properties of NPs are always controlled by the properties of the core (Das et al. 2008; Virkutyte and Varma 2012). NPs
* J. C. Onyemachi [email protected] S. I. Onwukwe [email protected] Ugochukwu Ilozurike Duru [email protected] A. O. Chikwe [email protected] N. Uwaezuoke [email protected] 1
Petroleum Engineering Department, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria
are known to possess high thermal and mechanical stability, and they can be modified or tailored to fit the specifications of any given reservoir system. Also, NPs have the capacity to withstand high pressures, temperatures, shear and salinity which is the predominant condition in the subsurface reservoir system, hence making them suitable for EOR processes (Andreassen 2015; Bennestien and Mogensen 2014). Application of nanofluids flooding is recently emerging as enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods (Ogolo et al. 2012). Current research work has shown that nanoparticles have the potential to solve several problems in the petroleum industry Chengara et al. (2004). One of the areas being speculated for application of nanoparticles is the area of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) a
