Reza Azin

Injection of chemical in the reservoir in order to displace the remaining oil from the pore spaces is among the most widely accepted techniques. Combination of surfactant and polymer along with nanoparticles (NPs) is gaining the attention of scholars nowadays. Present work focuses on the application of bio-Ca NPs with the surfactant polymer (SP) slug to improve its efficiency. Surface tension, interfacial tension, surfactant adsorption, and oil recovery were examined for the evaluation of performance of the NPs assisted SP injection technique. Addition of 1000 ppm of NPs reduced the CMC of surfactant by 24%. Synergistic effect between bio-Ca NPs and anionic surfactant molecules observed from the experimental results of surface tension and IFT values. The surface tension value of distilled water reduces to 34.5 mN from 72.6 mN/m upon addition of 2500 ppm surfactant. Addition of NPs further reduced the surface tension of the solution by 24%. Introduction of NPs modified the wetting of oil wet surface to strongly water wet surface. Furthermore, addition of NPs also improved the viscosity of the SP slug by 41% at 108 sec-1 shear rate. An increase in cumulative oil recovery from ~69% to ~76% was obtained upon addition of 1000 ppm of bio-Ca NPs in SP slug. Furthermore, 1000 ppm of NPs addition also reduced the surfactant adsorption by 33% for 1000 ppm of surfactant concentration. It can be inferred from the experimental data that the bio-Ca NPs has the potential to improve the performance of the chemical injection technique that can be exploited for addition oil recovery.