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

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

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

DOI: 10.4236/wjet.2015.33013                

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.

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