Rheological characteristics of metal oxide nanocomposite and its application in enhanced oil recovery

Abstract

A nanocomposite is a mixture of a nanoparticle and a complementary substance. In crude oil recovery, it is most commonly the combination of a nanoparticle and a polymer. In enhanced oil recovery, metal oxide nanoparticles may be combined with polymers and injected into a reservoir after water flooding to achieve greater recovery of crude oil; however, current research in this area is limited. In this work, rheological properties and oil recovery potential of two nanocomposites: alumina/xanthan gum and alumina/guar gum; were investigated. The viscosity of different concentrations of the nanocomposites was measured using the Model 800 OFITE Viscometer, and core flooding experiment was done using a Reservoir Permeability Tester. For both nanocomposites, it was observed that their viscosities increased with increasing concentration of alumina nanoparticles and the effect was higher as polymer concentration was increased. For the core flooding experiments, the xanthan gum and alumina composite achieved total recovery of 72.8 % while the guar gum alumina nanocomposite achieved total recovery of 69.3 %. The use of alumina combinations of nanocomposite is, therefore, promising and should be explored further.