Comparative study on enhanced oil recovery effect of amphiphilic nanomaterials - Experiment and mechanism Investigation

Abstract

Due to the transcendental property of nanoparticle, nanoparticle fluid flooding becomes one of the enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique, which had played a significant role in tight oil exploitation in the worldwide scale recent years. In particular, the amphiphilic nanomaterials can greatly increase the oil recovery.To provide some guidance in selecting nanomaterials for flooding, 3 kinds of amphiphilic nanomaterials, including silicon dioxide (SiO2), graphene oxide (GO) and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), are chosen to serve as object of the study. In lab, the physical properties were systematically characterized and flooding was conducted. Further, the morphology character of nanomaterials was placed extra emphasis and the mechanisms of EOR were also studied. The purpose was to find the link between the morphology of nanomaterials and EOR. Flooding experiment revealed that MoS2 were able to enhance the oil recovery by approximately 11%, which were better that of the others. From the above, it can be inferred that spherical materials have a “point-to-surface” contact at multiphase interfaces, while sheet materials can achieve a “surface-to-surface” contact with a higher interfacial activity. In addition, the film-climbing characteristics of amphiphilic nanomaterials were found in the experiment, which may be one of the potential reasons for enhanced oil recovery.