Engineered Nanomaterials for Sustainable Oil Separation and Recovery

Abstract

In this review, we focus on engineered nanomaterials (NMs) offering economic and environmental sustainability in oil extraction. We introduce underlying issues in oil recovery and separation and discuss fundamental physical and chemical interactions in typical oil‐water‐solid systems that guide the design of NMs. In recovery, the NMs change rock wettability, permeability, or sweep fluid properties to attain optimal resource use and minimal environmental impact. Applied NMs include nanosurfactants, silica core‐shell structures, nano‐encapsulated acids, and nanofluids. While for separation, the NMs use mechanisms of adsorption, filtration, or dispersion to improve separation performance in industrial or aquatic oil spill settings. The NMs include iron oxide nanoparticles, graphene Joule‐heating sponges, superhydrophilic poly(vinylidene fluoride) membranes, and amphiphilic Janus silicon dioxide nanoparticles. Albeit the NMs exhibit impressive performance in sustainable oil extraction, a technological gap remains between the lab‐scale demonstrations and practical field deployment. We conclude with a perspective on bridging this gap.

Exploring the Self‐Cleaning Facets of Fluorinated Graphene Nanoarchitectonics: Progress and Perspectives

“…Drawing inspiration from Mother Nature, designing robust super‐wetting systems to displace oil from oil‐water mixtures remains a promising research topic [103] . The selective oil/organic solvents collection prototypes with effective recovery of the oils from the surface waters has been investigated through engineering innovative materials demonstrating special‐wetting functions [104–107] . There is a lot of interest in the creation of amphiphobic surfaces with various Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOF) wherein issues such as transparency, chemical stability, hydrolytic stability and moisture sensitivity needs improvement [108–117] …”

“…[103] The selective oil/organic solvents collection prototypes with effective recovery of the oils from the surface waters has been investigated through engineering innovative materials demonstrating special-wetting functions. [104][105][106][107] There is a lot of interest in the creation of [92] d) Schematic of dry-compression molding for graphene and FG nanosheets, Reproduced with permission from ref. [94] and e) (left) solvent contact angles including R-141b and deionized water and (right) boiling visualization on Cu-plain, Graphene, and F-Graphene surfaces.…”

Superoleophobic Polyketone Nanofiber Membranes for Efficient Separation of Oil/water Emulsions

“…Although the fouling generated during the oily water purification process could be reduced by utilizing decontamination agents, applying these chemicals generally increases the overall operation cost and substantially reduces the lifetime of the membranes, also leading to poor recyclability [5] . Numerous studies have been conducted on the appropriate fabrication methods to design ideal membranes than can render excellent wettability and durability to avoid the use of decontamination agents [2d,4a,e,6] …”

Carbon-Based Active Nanoparticles with Ultrahigh Temperature and Salt Resistance for Enhanced Oil Recovery from Unconventional Oil Reservoirs

“…Nanomaterials are widely used in low permeability reservoirs due to their excellent properties such as small size, strong migration ability, and structural separation pressure. , Nanomaterials such as silica, titanium dioxide, and alumina have been proven to be effective in enhancing oil recovery. − However, the particle size of traditional nanomaterials is not small enough, which hinders them from passing through micronano pore throats . Nanomaterials have poor stability under harsh reservoir conditions and can be easily destroyed or agglomerated .…”