UT PGE Professor Showcases Innovative R&D Projects at OTC
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May 12, 2015
The next generation of innovators displayed the latest research projects geared toward offshore technology applications during the 2015 Offshore Technology Conference's (OTC) University R&D Showcase in Houston.
The event, which brought in almost 95,000 attendees from the oil and gas industry representing 130 countries, featured projects on display from eight universities across the U.S. including The University of Texas at Austin.
Focusing on Safety and Efficiency
A focus on performance drives the team from UT Austin's Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering (UT PGE). "As a petroleum engineering department, our work is designed specifically to make exploration and production of hydrocarbons safer and more efficient," said Dr. Hugh Daigle, assistant professor.
The team, including UT PGE graduate student Yusra Ahmad, is examining improved residual oil recovery using silica nanoparticles to create stable emulsions of pentane in water. The emulsions were injected into sandstone cores that were saturated with brine and mineral oil at residual oil saturation.
Yusra Ahmad working on her research project in the UT PGE lab
"We found that the emulsions allowed up to 70 percent recovery of the residual oil for 86 percent total recovery," Daigle said. "The use of nanoparticles allows us to perform these operations in high-temperature and high-salinity reservoirs where standard surfactants might not be feasible."
He noted that because nanoparticles are less environmentally hazardous than chemical surfactants, they are well suited for offshore applications.
Discover more on how Daigle and his team are enhancing oil recovery with nanoparticles
For its second project, the team, including M.S. student Ebrahim Rasromani, investigated how to make better predictions of safe mud windows by considering changes in the permeability tensor that occurs in the reservoir during depletion. Researchers also looked at how these new permeabilities would react to the hoop stresses induced around a new wellbore. The permeability project will allow for better prediction of safe mud windows for drilling through depleted formations, helping to reduce the risk in deviated wells in complex reservoirs.
"We found that the loss of primary pore space results in a greater degree of anisotropy, with the vertical permeability decreasing more rapidly than the horizontal permeability while grain cracking resulted in slight increases in permeability and a reduction in anisotropy," Daigle said.
This article was published in the Offshore Technology Conference's newspaper produced by Hart Energy and written by Mary Hogan.
