Evaluating the Oil Mobilization Properties of Nanoparticles Treated with Arabic Gum and Xanthan Gum for Trapped Oil in Porous Media

摘要

The flow of multiple fluid phases in porous media often results in trapped droplets of the non-wetting phase. Recent experimental and theoretical studies have suggested that nanoparticle aqueous dispersions may be effective at mobilizing trapped droplets of oil in porous media. Hypotheses to explain the observation include the nanoparticles' modification of solid wettability, changes in interfacial tension and interface rheology. The difficulty in observing droplet behavior on the pore scale has made the understanding of such mechanism still unclear. In this work, the relationship between nanoparticle concentration and microscopic diversion of flow was investigated and how this impacts on the oil mobilization efficiency.udAlso investigated in this work was how the rheology of the dispersion medium forudnanoparticles impacts on the overall recovery of trapped oil in porous media. A core floodingudexperiment was carried out on which aqueous solutions of different concentrations of theudnanoparticle dispersion was used as the displacing fluid likewise rheological modifiedudsolutions of the nanofluids. The output of this work showed that the nanoparticleudconcentration impacts on the recovery of trapped oil through the microscopic diversion ofudfluid flow in porous media and this phenomenon in conjunction with earlier mentionudhypothesis effectively showed how nanoparticles enhances the recovery of trapped oil inudporous media.