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Simulation of Silica Nanoparticle

Flooding for Enhancing Oil Recovery
a b c d
M. Safari , A. Golsefatan , A. Rezaei & M. Jamialahmadi
a
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Amirkabir University of
Technology, Tehran, Iran
b
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of
Technology, Ahwaz, Iran
c
Department of Chemical Engineering, Shahid Bahonar University of
Kerman, Kerman, Iran
d
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of
Technology, Ahwaz, Iran
Published online: 20 Dec 2014.
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To cite this article: M. Safari, A. Golsefatan, A. Rezaei & M. Jamialahmadi (2015) Simulation of Silica
Nanoparticle Flooding for Enhancing Oil Recovery, Petroleum Science and Technology, 33:2, 152-158,
DOI: 10.1080/10916466.2014.945597

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 Petroleum Science and Technology, 33:152–158, 2015
Copyright 
C Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1091-6466 print / 1532-2459 online
DOI: 10.1080/10916466.2014.945597

Simulation of Silica Nanoparticle Flooding

for Enhancing Oil Recovery

M. Safari,1 A. Golsefatan,2 A. Rezaei,3 and M. Jamialahmadi4

1
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
2
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Ahwaz, Iran
Downloaded by [Erciyes University] at 10:31 22 December 2014

3
Department of Chemical Engineering, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran
4
Department of Petroleum Engineering, Petroleum University of Technology, Ahwaz, Iran

Obtaining accurate relative permeability curves from coreflood experiments is imperative for character-
izing a reservoir and estimating its production capability. As the relative permeabilities are not directly
measurable, they are inferred from the measured data utilizing some mathematical model of the physical
process. This procedure is referred to as inverse modelling. The inverse problem is to obtain estimates of
the relative permeability functions using the data measured during displacement experiments. It concerns
on the unsteady state relative permeabilities that are obtained from waterflood and suspension of silica
nanoparticle flood experiments. For each experiment, recovery and pressure drop data were collected and
used in a coreflood simulator. The coreflood simulator used in this study is the Sendra. As the relative
permeability is a function of saturation, the authors required the estimates of the entire function. The
results show that it is possible to determine one set of relative permeability curves that reconcile several
nanosilica flooding experiments simultaneously using the history match method.

Keywords: simulation, silica nanoparticles, history match, EOR, waterflood

INTRODUCTION

Nanotechnology is science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about
1–100 nm. Ju et al. (2002) used hydrophobic and lipophilic polysilicon nanoparticles (HLPN).
They presented a one-dimensional two-phase mathematical model with consideration of migration
and adsorption of HLPN and wettability change in reservoir rock (based on the microcosmic
physical experiments and core displacement experiments). In addition, a numerical simulator has
been developed to match the data from core displacement experiments and predict flow performance
and porosity and permeability change of porous media due to injection of HLPN. They showed that
the wettability of surface of reservoir rock is changed from water-wet to oil-wet by adsorption of
HLPN by measurement of wetting angles. Binshan et al. (2006) used lipophobic and hydrophilic
polysilicon nanoparticles (LHPN) for changing the wettability of porous media. They proposed a
one-dimensional two-phase mathematical model considering the migration and adsorption of LHPN
and wettability change in reservoir rock. They developed a simulator to quantitatively predict the
changes in relative and effective permeability of the oil and water phases and the oil recovery in

Address correspondence to M. Safari, Department of Petroleum Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology,

Tehran, Iran. E-mail: safari mahdi64@yahoo.com
Color versions of one or more of the figures in the article can be found online at www.tandfonline.com/lpet.

152
 SIMULATION OF SILICA NANOPARTICLE FLOODING 153

sandstone after water driving. They showed that the oil recovery could obviously be improved by
flooding with hydrophilic nanometer powders though permeability declines for the retention of
nanoparticles in porous media. Ju et al. (2009) used two types of PN to improve oil recovery and
enhance water injection. They presented a mathematical model to describe the nanoparticles transport
carried by two-phase flow in random porous media. Moreover, a numerical simulator was developed
to simulate two application examples of the nanoparticles in oilfields. They showed wetting angles
(contact angle) were changed and it was indicating that the wettability of surface sandstone could be
changed from oil wet to water-wet by adsorbing LHPN. Qinfeng et al. (2010) presented innovative
drag reduction method to decrease the drag of laminar flows of water through rock’s microchannels.
They have used hydrophobic nanoparticles (HNPs). Their experiments showed that the porous walls
can be adsorbed tightly by HNPs and their surfaces can be turned from water-wetting to oil-wetting.
Onyekonwu and Ogolo (2010) studied the ability of three types of PN to enhance oil recovery that they
Downloaded by [Erciyes University] at 10:31 22 December 2014

were LHPN, HLPN and neutrally wet PN (NWPN). Their results indicated that NWPN and HLPN are
significant enhanced oil recovery (EOR) agents in water wet formations. Ju et al. (2012) showed that
the treatment of increasing water wetting wettability control agent (IWWCA) leads to 15.38% more
oil recovery in comparison with normal water displacement using numerical simulations. Roustaei
et al. (2012) used HLPN and NWPN as EOR agents in water-wet sandstone rocks. They have
reported that oil recoveries increase by 32.2% and 28.57% when a 4 g/L concentration of HLPN and
NWPN nanofluids are injected into the core samples. In another experimental study (Hendraningrat
et al., 2012); the amount of enhanced oil recovery has been evaluated during a hydrophilic silica
nanoparticle injection into several water-wet Berea sandstone core plugs. They argued that nanofluid
flooding reaches 8% higher oil recovery in comparison with brine flooding. Also, a lower IFT has
been observed with increasing nanofluid concentration from 0.01 to 0.05 wt%. They have also
investigated the nanofluid possibility for EOR from low to high-permeability sandstone in another
work (Hendraningrat et al., 2013b). A set of core flood experiments were performed on water-wet
core plugs with permeability in the range of 9–400 md. They have discovered that the 0.05 wt%
nanoparticles do the best in the recovery for all samples with the permeability in an appropriate range.
A recent study (Hendraningrat et al., 2013a) evaluated the effects of some parameters influencing
oil recovery process due to the nanoparticles flooding such as particle size, rock permeability, initial
rock wettability, injection rate, and temperature. Reaching to this purpose, three different sizes of
hydrophilic silica nanoparticles with single particle diameter range from 7 to 40 nm and 26 Berea
sandstone cores with permeability ranges from 5 to 450 md have been employed by changing the
of initial rock wettability from water-wet to intermediate and oil-wet and changing of 25–80◦ C for
temperature. According to this study, as the nanofluids injection rate increases, the incremental oil
recovery decreases. Also, as the temperature increases, the incremental oil recovery and displacement
efficiency increases. In addition, the incremental oil recovery and displacement efficiency increases
as the nanoparticle size decreases. By increasing permeability they have not seen any proportional
relationship with respect to increment oil recovery. Hence, nano-EOR seems to be applicable in
a wide range of reservoir rock permeability. At last, the highest incremental oil recovery and
displacement efficiency was achieved from intermediate-wet condition. So, it seems that nanofluids
will be more effective in intermediate-wet rocks. TiO2 nanoparticles have been also used as EOR
agent for heavy oil recovery from sandstone core plugs. It was established the recovery factor can be
improved from 49% to 80% using anatase nanoparticles (Ehtesabi et al., 2013). Hendraningrat and
Torsæter (2014) investigated the effect of hydrophilic metal oxides nanoparticles for EOR purposes
through core flood tests on Berea sandstone cores in their most recent experimental work. Two
metal oxides, aluminum (Al2O3) and titanium (TiO2), have been used and compared with silica
nanoparticles (SiO2). In their work, in order to stabilize nanoparticles, a dispersant has been used to
avoid early metal oxides nanoparticle aggregation. They observed that the dispersant will alter fluid
behavior and successfully provide better stability at particular concentration. They have found that
TiO2 has highest oil recovery among Al2O3, SiO2, and dispersant alone.
 154 M. SAFARI ET AL.
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FIGURE 1 TEM image of silica nanoparticles.

Previous works have been done in sandstone cores. Although, a large portion of the reservoirs
formation are from low-permeability carbonate formations, the few studies that have been done
in this method have failed to cover these reservoirs. So, we have done this work on carbonate
formations. In this study, we have simulated the process of silica nanoparticle flooding for enhanced
oil recovery.

EXPERIMENTAL

Polysilicon Nanofluids

The used particle was LHPN. The TEM image of the nanoparticles that are dispersed in water is
shown in Figure 1.
This figure shows that the nanoparticles are well dispersed in the solvent and would remain in
nanoscale. Properties of each of this PN are presented in Table 1. By adding this nanoparticle to

TABLE 1
Properties of PN

Nanoparticle type LHPN

Average size, nm 14
Color White
PH in used 3.7–4.7
Melting point, ◦ C 1700
Density, g/cm3 2.2
Smell Odorless
 SIMULATION OF SILICA NANOPARTICLE FLOODING 155
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FIGURE 2 FTIR spectrum of silica nanoparticles.

water, it leads to a suspension state liquid. Ultrasonic used to disturb the particles. The resulting
suspension was put in the device for 15–20 min. As the nanoparticles were coated by carboxyl
groups, the prepared suspension was stabilized, and the nanoparticles were not settled in the water
during the experiment. This suspension was prepared in various concentrations. The result of Fourier
transform infrared (FTIR) test is shown in Figure 2.
This figure shows three peaks at about 1100, 809, and 470 cm–1 due to Si O bond. The band at
3433 cm–1 indicates that the carboxyl group is attached at the surface of synthesized silica particles.
The peak at about 1633 cm–1 donates the hydroxyl group.

Core Plugs

In this work, carbonate plugs with 0.15 porosity and 0.2 md permeability were used. The length and
diameter of each plug were about 6 and 3.8 cm, respectively.

Oil and Brine

The oil used in the experiments was taken from “S” reservoir in Persian Gulf. The density of the
oil was 897.101 kg/cm3. For saturation and flooding 200000 ppm and 42000 ppm brines were used,
respectively. The brine used for this experiment was prepared in the laboratory with the same salinity
as the “S” Reservoir formation water.
 156 M. SAFARI ET AL.

TABLE 2
Parameters of Relative Permeabilities Correlation

Brine Concentration, % Nw No Krw (Sor) Kro (Sw) SSR

0 2.36217 2.0603 0.9 0.8 2.58516

0.01 1.21032 2.12621 0.8 0.8 4.98474
0.05 1.41637 1.64807 0.9 1 4.43881
0.1 5 3.5 0.6 1 16.4986
0.5 3.22579 1.23304 0.4 1 4.95934

Simulation
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Coreflood simulator

The used coreflood simulator was the Sendra (2011). Sendra is a two-phase 1D black-oil sim-
ulation model used for analyzing single SCAL experiments as well as several SCAL experiments
simultaneously. It is tailor made for revealing the relative permeability and capillary pressure from
two-phase and multi-phase flow experiments performed in the SCAL laboratory. Corey correlation
has been used to represent the relative permeability curves.
k − rw. = , k − rw − 0., (, S − w − ∗.)−, N − w..&,
k − ro. = , k − ro − 0., (, 1 − S − w − ∗.)−, N − o.. (1)
where Krw and Kro are water and oil relative permeabilities, respectively. Also Krw and Kro 0 0

denote end point of water and oil relative permeabilities, respectively. The curvature is given by the
parameter Nw or No for water relative permeability or oil relative permeability, respectively. Also,
Sw , Swi , Sor , and Sw ∗ denote water, irreducible water, residual oil, and effective water saturations,
respectively.where:
, S − w − ∗. = (, S − w.−, S − wi.)/(1−, S − wi.−, S − or.)

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this work, Sendra core simulator has been used to history match the experimental data in an
implicit methodology in order to determine the relative permeability curves then the calculated sum of
squared residuals (SSR) during estimation was reported. SSR is a measure of the difference between
the simulated and experimental data. The estimated parameters for Corey relative permeability
correlation and SSR are reported in Table 2.
As mentioned previously, different experiments were conducted to assess the influence of the
amount of wettability alteration on oil recovery during waterflooding process. The results of the
unsteady state (constant rate) experiments contribute the information for estimating relative perme-
ability data.
Figure 3 shows the oil and water relative permeability estimated curves that reconcile all five
experiments simultaneously.
By using the oil recovery data these set of relative permeability curves are estimated. These figures
show that when wettability change from oil-wet to water wet, the relative permeability curves and
end points, shift to right. Also start of water permeability curve lie down and oil relative permeability
tend to straight line.
 SIMULATION OF SILICA NANOPARTICLE FLOODING 157
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FIGURE 3 Estimated relative permeabilities.

As nanoparticles are adsorbed during a test, therefore contact angle changes continuously along
the core and during the test, thus all curves show the stair manner, except the brine flooding curve.
Therefore, we could just match a part of recovery data. Figure 4 depicts the history matching results
for the multiscenario feature. As seen in these figure, simulation results have a good match with
experimental data. All of the curves have low SSR except experiment no. 4 (0.1% silica nanoparticle),
because the simulator assumes homogeneous media. Therefore, bypassing and snap off of oil did
not consider.

FIGURE 4 Comparison between experimental data and simulation recovery curves.

 158 M. SAFARI ET AL.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on results of the simulations, it is concluded that it is possible to determine one set of relative
permeability curves of nanosilica flooding that reconcile several nanosilica flooding experiments
simultaneously using the history match method.

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