Papers by Keyword: Recovery Factor

Abstract: The decline in conventional oil recovery efficiency necessitates the development of advanced tertiary methods such as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). This study investigates a hybrid nanofluid composed of acetylated cassava starch and silica nanoparticles for application in chemical EOR. Acetylated starch was synthesized to enhance viscosity and thermal stability, while silica nanoparticles were incorporated for their interfacial activity and wettability alteration capabilities. Comprehensive laboratory experiments were conducted to evaluate the hybrid fluid’s physicochemical, rheological, and recovery performance. Characterization using FTIR, XRD, SEM, and TGA confirmed successful functionalization and improved thermal resilience. Rheological tests demonstrated shear-thinning behavior with high viscosity retention. The hybrid fluid also achieved a 57.7% reduction in interfacial tension and altered sandstone wettability from oil-wet to strongly water-wet conditions. Core flooding tests revealed a recovery factor of 68.9%, outperforming starch-only, silica-only, and brine controls. The synergy between the polymer and nanoparticles enhanced colloidal stability, flow performance, and oil displacement efficiency under simulated reservoir conditions. The use of cassava starch as a biodegradable and locally sourced material underscores the environmental and economic viability of the formulation. These findings support the potential of acetylated starch–silica nanofluids as sustainable, high-performance EOR agents.

Abstract: With the continuous exploitation of most reservoirs in China, the proportion of heavy oil reservoirs increases, and the development difficulty is greater than that of conventional reservoirs. In view of the important subject of how to improve the recovery factor of heavy oil reservoir, the thermal recovery technology (hot water flooding, steam flooding, steam assisted gravity drainage SAGD and steam huff and puff) and cold recovery technology (chemical flooding, electromagnetic wave physical flooding and microbial flooding) used in the development of heavy oil reservoir are summarized. The principle of action is analyzed, and the main problems restricting heavy oil recovery are analyzed The main technologies of heavy oil recovery are introduced from the aspects of cold recovery and hot recovery. Based on the study of a large number of literatures, and according to the development trend of heavy oil development, suggestions and prospects for the future development direction are put forward.

Abstract: Oil reservoirs are porous and permeable rocks that allow the hydrocarbon accumulation. Reservoir simulations are necessary to obtain the best fluid flow conditions in the porous medium and increase oil recovery capacity. The aim of this paper was to study the influence of the absolute rock permeability on the oil recovery of a complex geometry oil reservoir, using water injection with the black oil model. Numerical simulations in boundary-fitted coordinates were performed in a two-dimensional and irregularly shaped reservoir. Finite volume method was used to solve the governing equations and two inverted five-spot meshes were set in parallel for a total injection time of 30 years. Results of injected porous volume per recovered oil volume, the water cut charts and the water saturations maps showed that the lower porous medium permeability increased the oil recovery, once the permeability intensified fingers and early breakthrough, which leads to high water production rates and consequent reduction of the waterflooding efficiency.

Abstract: The proposed method is a dry separation tailings. A separator developed for separating the tailings of the quartz sand and iron-bearing components. The efficiency of separation of enrichment tails in the fluidized bed separator is shown. The use of mill tailings as components in the manufacture of building materials is practically confirmed by testing samples of fine-grained concrete and asphalt.

Abstract: Nanotechnology has significant contributions on developing modern industries, such as electronics, biomedical, materials, manufacturing, and energy industry. The changes introduced by nanotechnology, have currently extended to several areas for oil and gas industry, namely exploration, drilling, production, refining and enhanced oil recovery (EOR). This study focuses on attraction to the worldwide attention of nanotechnology and how this method effects oil breakthrough and improves EOR. This Study also implies that parameters such as rock types, crude oil types, nanoparticle types, concentrations, and sizes, have significant factors on recovery factor (RF) through improving key-parameters such as oil relative permeability, interfacial tension (IFT), wettability, transmissibility and particles retention.

Abstract: Description is given to preparation of three ionic liquid surfactants containing amine functional groups, characterization of their functional groups using the infrared spectrometer, determination of their surface tension and the oil displacement test in this paper to investigate the effect of alkane branch chains with different carbon numbers on the surface tension and the displacement efficiency. The result shows that, the surfactants exhibit the structural characteristic of the ionic liquid as the characteristic absorption peaks occur on C-N and C-H of the imidazole rings at the wave numbers of 1338cm-1, 1234cm-1, 1465cm-1 and 3142cm-1, respectively. The surface tension isothermal curves and the oil displacement test proved that the ionic liquid imidazole surfactants with shorter-chain groups are more active on surface, with the minimal surface tension up to 32.5 mN/m, and led to higher displacement efficiency, increasing by 3.3% at the concentration of 1000mg/L compared with the water flooding.

Abstract: In this work we carried out a numerical study of the heavy oil recovery process in oil reservoir through water injection. We performed transient tridimensional numerical simulations, considering an isothermal process, with a variation in the position of water injection section (interior and surface) in the reservoir, using the ANSYS CFX 11 commercial package and evaluated its effects on the recovery factor of oil. The numerical results showed that varying the flow rate of water injection from 0.10 to 0.25 kg/s there was an increase in the flow of water and oil produced in 193% and 28%, respectively, and the recovery factor in 16.7%

Abstract: The world has been witnessing a growing interest in heavy oil fields as a result of a reduction in conventional oil reserves. In this sense, this work aims to study numerically the process of heavy oil recovering in oil reservoir via water injection. Transient three-dimensional numerical simulations, considering isothermal and non-isothermal processes, were performed using the ANSYS CFX 11 commercial code, and its effects upon the oil recovery factor evaluated. The numerical results indicated an increase of 29% (non-isothermal case) and 18% (isothermal case) in the recovery factor when water was injected on the reservoir surface as compared to the water internal injection in the reservoir.

Abstract: In this paper, simulation study was conducted to investigate the effect of spatial heterogeneity of multiple porosity fields on oil recovery, residual oil and microemulsion saturation. The generated porosity fields were fed into UTCHEM for simulating surfactant flooding in heterogeneous two-layered porous media. From the analysis, surfactant flooding was more sensitive than water flooding to the spatial distribution of multiple porosity fields. Residual oil saturation in upper and lower layers after water flooding was about the same with the reservoir heterogeneity. On the other hand, both residual oil and microemulsion saturation in the two layers after surfactant flooding became more equal as porosity distribution standard increased. Spatial heterogeneity of multiple porosity fields had only a small effect on residual oil saturation and recovery factor. The variation of recovery factor due to the reservoir heterogeneity was under 4.2%.