A Comprehensive Investigation of Nanocomposite Polymer Flooding at Reservoir Conditions: New Insights into Enhanced Oil Recovery

Recently, the polymer-nanoparticle combination has garnered significant interest in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) due to its promising experimental results. However, the previous research was mostly directed at silica, while alumina and zirconia nanoparticles have gotten the least consideration. Unlike previous works, this study aims to investigate the influence of three NPs: Silica (SiO₂), Alumina (Al₂O₃), and Zirconia (ZrO₂) on hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM). To this end, three nanocomposites were formulated: HPAM-SiO₂, HPAM-Al₂O₃, and HPAM-ZrO₂. Rheological evaluations were performed to examine the viscosity degradation of the three nanocomposites and HPAM under reservoir conditions. Furthermore, interfacial tension (IFT) at the oil–water interface and wettability studies were investigated. Moreover, sand-pack flooding was performed to examine the incremental oil recovery. The results revealed that the polymer viscosity was boosted by 110%, 45%, and 12% for HPAM-SiO₂, HPAM-Al₂O₃, and HPAM-ZrO₂ respectively under the investigation range of temperature. Moreover, the polymer viscosity was improved by 73%, 48%, and 12% for HPAM-SiO₂, HPAM-Al₂O₃, and HPAM-ZrO₂ respectively under the investigation range of salinity. Nanocomposites are also found to be a remarkable agent for reducing interfacial tension and changing the contact angle. The flooding experiments confirmed that the EOR by HPAM, HPAM-SiO₂, HPAM-Al₂O₃, and HPAM-ZrO₂, was 8.6%, 17.4%, 15.3%, and 13.6% of OOIP respectively. Moreover, the results of flooding experiments were well validated and matched by numerical simulation. Such findings of this work afford new insights into EOR and reinforce the promising outlook of such technique at the field scale.