A Solid Discovery Enhances Oil Recovery
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October 06, 2014
The latest idea from Dr. David DiCarlo’s lab is the application of nanoparticles during enhanced oil recovery (EOR) to pull a greater percentage of hydrocarbons out of the ground.
Nanoparticles, which are used across other industries including the medical field, are simply solid particles on the order of a billionth of a meter, i.e. nanometers. For perspective, a nanoparticle is one million times smaller than an ant. Due to their size, nanoparticles can be suspended in brine and are ideal to use during the recovery process.
Associate Professor David DiCarlo in his CT scanner lab
“Usually, we only have the ability to work with fluids and solvents in EOR, because the holes in the rock are so small,” said DiCarlo. “A solid works in this case, since the holes look like canyons to the nanoparticles. Due to this capability, you can engineer the nanoparticles to make them work in an ideal fashion; we are no longer limited to fluids.”
Nanoparticles cannot stand alone as a recovery agent, but they enhance CO2’s ability to displace the oil. DiCarlo says, “CO2 is an excellent fluid for EOR, but it has one fatal flaw – low viscosity - so we miss a lot of the oil.” His team is attempting to remedy that issue with nanoparticles.
Second year M.S. student, Roy Wung, is working with DiCarlo in the lab to find an avenue for better contacting the reservoir.
“The commercial nanoparticles I work with are attracted to CO2 and water interfaces, making the CO2 more viscous during injection into rocks,” said Wung. “When it is more viscous it can displace more oil, so I run core floods with nanoparticles, water, and CO2 to quantify and optimize these effects.”
DiCarlo and his team are now working with a company in the field looking to pilot nanoparticles in its recovery operations. His goal is to see application of this method in areas focused on EOR, particularly in West Texas. His lab experiments suggest a positive outlook for nanoparticles in EOR. He has a nanoparticles supplier and fields to conduct the work, but first they are developing a model to better predict its success outside of the lab.
Another benefit of nanoparticles for this particular experiment, beyond EOR, is the positive implications on carbon storage. “The improved CO2 viscosity with nanoparticles allows it to overcome reservoir heterogeneity and reach more places in the reservoir,” said Wung. “Therefore, we can store CO2 more efficiently in geologic formations and minimize our subsurface footprint. In addition, nanoparticles hold the CO2 in a safer, more stable phase than a bulk gas. If there was a leakage pathway, the nanoparticles would prevent the CO2 from rising to the surface.”
The impact of nanoparticles in enhanced oil recovery is still to be determined, but DiCarlo and his team believe it has the possibility to be a significant player in the process. Wung said, “The potential for this technology is truly exciting.”
