Effect of Annealing Temperature on the Crystallization of Hematite-Alumina (Fe₂O₃-Al₂O₃) Nanocomposite and its Influence in EOR Application

Abstract

Usage of magnetic materials is not unusual in oil and gas research, specifically in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) where various magnetic micro-and nanoparticles were used to enhance sweep efficiency, reducing interfacial tension and heat generation. Magnetic nanoparticles which are activated by a magnetic field are anticipated to have the ability to travel far into the oil reservoir and assist in the displacement of the trapped oil. In this work, magnetic Fe2O3-Al2O3 nanocomposite was synthesized and characterized for its morphological, structural and magnetic properties. At an annealing temperature of 900°C, this nanomaterial starts to exhibit magnetization as the composite structure crystallizes to the stable Fe2O3 and Al2O3. Subsequently, dispersion of the 0.01 wt% Fe2O3-Al2O3 nanocomposite in distilled water was used for displacement tests to validate its feasibility to be applied in EOR. In the displacement test, the effect of electromagnetic waves on the magnetization of Fe2O3-Al2O3 nanofluid was also investigated by irradiating a 13.6 MHz square wave to the porous medium while nanofluid injection is taking place. In conclusion, an almost 20% increment in the recovery of oil was obtained with the application of electromagnetic waves in 2.4 pore volumes (PV) injection of Fe2O3-Al2O3 nanofluid.

Application of Magnetic and Dielectric Nanofluids for Electromagnetic-Assistance Enhanced Oil Recovery: A Review

“…Experimental analysis using different NPs performed reasonably in this regard, such as Fe 2 O 3 -Al 2 O 3 [77]. CuO, Fe 2 O 3 , and NiO [81].…”

“…Despite the significant aspect of employing chemical nanofluids in the reservoir being recently regarded as one of the most reliable processes accredited by modern science and technology, the injected nanofluids in the reservoir usually undergo agglomerations due to the harsh situation of the reservoir and consequently cause the segregation of the fluids from the oil/water interface, as a result of which the nanofluids suffer great trapping in rock pores of the reservoir, and hence the nanofluids transportation will be refrained [49]. Furthermore, the injected chemicals are highly disturbed by high temperature and the high pressure of reservoirs, which leads to some failure, fracture, and degradation of their performance [77]. The EM-assisted nanofluids will be a significant substitute to remedy this critical challenge because the energy disaffected from the EM sources can easily penetrate in the nanofluids, which leads to initiating some disturbances at the oil/water interface, and consequently, the movement of the oil can be facilitated.…”

12012 fundamental mechanisms behind nanotechnology applications in oil and gas: Emerging nano-EOR processes

“…The EOR phenomena of many nanoparticles in a highfrequency external magnetic field has been studied in glassbead packs and sand packs by Yahya et al, including ZnO (Latiff et al, 2011;Zaid et al, 2013;Yahya et al, 2014;Adil et al, 2018), CoFe 2 O 4 (Yahya et al, 2012), Fe 2 O 3 (Yahya et al, 2014), (Soleimani et al, 2014), Al 2 O 3 (Soleimani et al, 2014), and Fe 3 O 4 (Latiff et al, 2016), as shown in Figure 18 (Yahya et al, 2014). However, the impact of temperature on rheology and mobility ratio has been well studied in the past decades.…”

The Properties of Sonicated Immersion Grown Hematite Films at Various Annealing Temperatures

“…Besides, the diffraction peak intensity of ( 110) or (104) in the synthesised samples also decreased with the increase of annealing temperature. The elevated annealing temperature had instigated the growth of hematite nanocrystals with crystallinity enhancement and the reduction of impurities that had formed a superior crystal in the hematite nanostructure film [19,21].…”