Evaluation of carbon-based 2D nanosheet for enhanced oil recovery application

Abstract

Intelligent Nanoflooding Agent (INFA) is a newly developed nanomaterial based on graphene oxides for EOR applications. We examined the size and morphology of INFA materials as well as their interaction with oil and brine solutions. In addition, systematic study on the properties of INFA-polymer mixture was also performed. The results show that INFA material has a typical size of 217.7 nm and piles up loosely in the aqueous solution. With a very low concentration of 50 mg/L, it can reduce the interfacial tension to 10⁻⁴mN/m indicating its high activity and the ability to uniformly distribute at the oil/water interface. The separation time between water and oil was found to increase with INFA concentration. Furthermore, we observed that INFA has the ability to interact with polymer and adding 100 mg/Lof INFA can double the viscosity of polymer solution. Finally, the core flooding test result revealed that the INFA-polymer mixture after water flooding can increase oil recovery efficiency by another 26.25%. This paper introduced a new carbon-based 2D nanomaterial and evaluates its potential for EOR applications. Beside its high activity at very low concentration, such material has the ability to significantly reduce the usage of polymer without affecting the performance.

Keywords:

• Enhanced oil recovery
• graphene oxide
• intelligent nano-flooding agent
• interfacial tension
• nanomaterial
• polymer

Acknowledgment

The work performed at State Key Laboratory of Offshore Oil Exploitation, CNOOC Energy Technology & Services Limited Key laboratory of Enhanced Oil Recovery, CNOOC EnerTech-Drilling & Production Cooperation, which is supported by the CNOOC Energy Technology & Services Limited under Contract HFZXKT-GJ2021-01-02.