Investigating the Effect of Various  Nanomaterials on the Wettability of  Sandstone Reservoir

El-Abbas Moustafa; Ahmed Noah; Karam Beshay; Lamees Sultan; Mina Essam; Omar Nouh

doi:10.4236/wjet.2015.33013

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WJET> Vol.3 No.3, August 2015

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Investigating the Effect of Various Nanomaterials on the Wettability of Sandstone Reservoir

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DOI: 10.4236/wjet.2015.33013 3,264 Downloads 3,962 Views Citations

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El-Abbas Moustafa¹, Ahmed Noah², Karam Beshay², Lamees Sultan², Mina Essam², Omar Nouh²

Affiliation(s)

¹Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute (EPRI), Cairo, Egypt.
²Petroleum and Energy Engineering Department, Faculty of Science and Engineering, The American University, Cairo, Egypt.

ABSTRACT

Wettability is the ability of a fluid to stick to a solid surface in the presence of other immiscible fluids. Wettability alteration is crucial as it affects the amount of oil recovered from a given reservoir. The majority of enhanced oil recovery mechanisms purposefully alter the wettability of the reservoir rock from oil-wet to water-wet; to increase the amount of oil recovered from it. This study investigates the effect of various nanomaterials on the wettability, and particularly the brine phase contact angle, of a sand stone reservoir. The nanomaterials used are Magnesium/Aluminum Layered Double Hydroxide, Silica/Zirconia, and a combination of 80.0% Magnesium/Aluminum Layered Double Hydroxide (Mg/Al-LDH) and 20.0% Silica/Zirconia (Zi/Zr). The results suggest that a concentration of 4.0 g/L of Magnesium/Aluminum Layered Double Hydroxide (Mg/Al-LDH) decreases the brine phase contact angle, in the presence of oil, from 66° to 60° in 0.033 minute as opposed to Silica/Zirconia which increases the brine phase contact angle to 68° in the same time interval. The combination of both nanoparticles results in a decrease of 1.0° in the brine phase contact angle indicating that Silica/Zirconia (Zi/Zr) lowers the efficiency of Magnesium/Aluminum Layered Double Hydroxide’s adsorption to the sandstone surface.

KEYWORDS

Nanomaterials, Wettability Alteration, Oil Recovery Mechanism

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Cite this paper

Moustafa, E. , Noah, A. , Beshay, K. , Sultan, L. , Essam, M. and Nouh, O. (2015) Investigating the Effect of Various Nanomaterials on the Wettability of Sandstone Reservoir. World Journal of Engineering and Technology, 3, 116-126. doi: 10.4236/wjet.2015.33013.

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