Synergistic effect of hydrophilic nanoparticles and anionic surfactant on the stability and viscoelastic properties of oil in water (O W)‎ emulations ; application for enhanced oil recovery (EOR)‎

Abstract EN

With the rapidly increased global energy demand, great attention has been focused onutilizing nanotechnology and particularly nanofluids in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) toproduce more oil from low-productivity oil reservoirs.

Nanofluid flooding has introduced asone of the promising methods for enhanced oil recovery using environment-friendlynanoparticles (NPs) to be as an innovative-alternative for chemical methods of EOR.

Thiswork investigates the synergistic effects of anionic surfactant and hydrophilic silicananoparticles on the stability and the mechanical behavior of oil in water (O/W) emulsionsfor their application in EOR.

To achieve this, an extensive series of experiments were conducted at a wide range oftemperatures (23 – 70 °C) and ambient pressure to systematically evaluate the stability andthe viscoelastic properties of the oil in water (O/W) emulsion with the presence ofhydrophilic silica nanoparticles and an anionic surfactant.

In this context, the initial oil towater volume ratio was 25: 75.

Sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) was used as the anionicsurfactant and n-decane was used as model oil.

A wide concentration ranges of NPs (0.01 –0.2 wt% ) and surfactant (0.1 – 0.3 wt% ) were used to formulate different emulsions.

Forstability measurements, a dynamic light scattering and zetasizer were used to measure theparticle size distribution and zeta potential respectively.

Creaming and phase behaviors werealso investigated.

The viscoelastic measurements were conducted using Discovery HybridRheometer.

Results show that in the presence of surfactant, and NPs mitigates the coalescence ofdispersed oil droplets giving high promises in EOR applications.

Further, over the testedrange of temperatures, the viscosity of O/W emulsion remains stable which indicates thermalstability.

Despite studies examining the use of nanoparticle-surfactant combination in sub-surfaceapplications, no reported data is currently available, to the best of our knowledge, about thepotential synergistic effect of this combination on the stability and viscoelastic properties ofO/W emulsion.

This study gives the first insight on nanoparticle-surfactant synergistic effecton oil in water (O/W) emulsion for EOR applications.