Introducing a new method of using nanocomposites for preventing asphaltene aggregation during real static and dynamic natural depletion tests

ABSTRACT

The recent use of nanoparticles (NPs) to adsorb asphaltene from oil in the oil reservoir has been recognized by researchers as an effective method. The present study shows a new synthetic nanocomposite (NC) called zirconia-zinc-copper for the removal of asphaltene deposits. The NC structure was determined by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), and Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis. In this study, to investigate the reduction of permeability/porosity in porous media, dynamic natural depletion (DND) experiments in the presence of nanocomposites (NCs) under static conditions were used. Also, in the presence of NCs, isotherm models, CO₂-oil (CO) IFT tests, and DND tests at the static phase were performed. In the following, the results were compared with zirconia NPs. The results showed that the mean particle diameter of NCs was measured by TEM analysis, about 27 nm. On the other hand, XRD analysis confirmed the TEM results. EDX analysis confirmed the presence of Zirconia, Zinc, Copper, and Oxygen elements in the synthetic NC structure. Also, FT-IR analysis shows the presence of zinc oxide (ZnO) and Copper oxide (CuO) peaks well. In addition, it was observed that the properties of ZrO₂-ZnO NCs were well improved using copper doping. The results of adsorption data in the presence of NC and zirconiaNPs showed that the above data are more consistent with Langmuir (LI) isotherm than Freundlich (FI) isotherm. In this regard, NCs had a higher absorption rate in batch experiments than zirconia. There were two different slopes in the IFT CO reading in the static phase, where the pressure increased from 200 Psi to 2600 Psi. Also, the second slope (1700 Psi-2600 Psi) was slower than the first slope (200 Psi-1700 Psi) due to the accumulation of asphaltene. The slope ratio of 2 to 1 after adding NC and zirconia NPs increased from 19.8% to 24.1% and 26.5%, respectively. In general, the results showed in this study that NCs absorb more asphaltene than zirconia NPs. NCs reduced asphaltene precipitation (AP) more than zirconia during natural depletion experiments. In this regard, NCs were selected for natural depletion experiments. Finally, asphaltene deposits, which occur in the dynamic phase, decreased after adding NC, and, finally, the porosity/permeability parameters improved well.

KEYWORDS:

• Nanoparticles (NPs)
• adsorption
• asphaltene
• zirconia
• nanocomposites (NCs)

Nomenclature

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15567036.2022.2113937