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Carbonated water injection: Effects of silica nanoparticles and operating pressure
Author(s) -
Fathollahi Alireza,
Rostami Behzad
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the canadian journal of chemical engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.404
H-Index - 67
eISSN - 1939-019X
pISSN - 0008-4034
DOI - 10.1002/cjce.22289
Subject(s) - water injection (oil production) , saturation (graph theory) , decane , solubility , hydrocarbon , nanoparticle , enhanced oil recovery , petroleum engineering , chemical engineering , water cut , materials science , environmental science , chemistry , geology , organic chemistry , nanotechnology , mathematics , combinatorics , engineering
Carbonated water injection (CWI) is the process of injecting CO 2 ‐saturated water into hydrocarbon reservoirs as a displacing fluid. As CO 2 is dissolved in and transported by the flood water, CO 2 is more evenly distributed within the reservoir, improving sweep efficiency. This is beneficial to watered‐out oil reservoirs, where high water saturation can adversely affect the performance of conventional CO 2 injection. In this study, the effects of increasing CO 2 concentration in water using silica nanoparticles, and of pressure on the CWI process were investigated through a number of high‐pressure coreflooding experiments. The experiments were performed in a highly water‐wet core, using normal decane as the oil phase. The results showed an increase in ultimate oil recovery as the level of CO 2 concentration in water increased. It was also observed that in the application of nanoparticles, an optimized concentration of nanoparticles must be used to obtain the maximum oil recovery factor. CWI showed a higher recovery factor both in the secondary and tertiary modes at higher pressures, owing to the increased solubility of CO 2 in water at high pressures. The results of this study suggest that secondary CWI performs better than tertiary recovery, due to the high probability of contact between the oil and the CO 2 gas and a growing concentration of CO 2 in the water.