Experimental investigation of heavy oil recovery by continuous/WAG injection of CO₂ saturated with silica nanoparticles
by Saeed Jafari; Ayub Khezrnejad; Omid Shahrokhi; Mohammad Hossein Ghazanfari; Manouchehr Vossoughi
International Journal of Oil, Gas and Coal Technology (IJOGCT), Vol. 9, No. 2, 2015

Abstract: In this work, application of CO₂ saturated with silica nanoparticles in continuous/water alternating gas (WAG) injection for heavy oil recovery was investigated which has been rarely attended in the available literature. Core displacement tests were conducted to monitor heavy oil recovery in both continuous and WAG injection schemes. It has been observed that for continuous nano-saturated CO₂ injection, the oil recovery is higher than pure CO₂ injection. This observation might be explained by alteration of rock wettability to a more water-wet condition. In WAG injection scheme, water breakthrough happened later in nano-saturated CO₂ than pure CO₂ injection. This delayed water breakthrough can be caused by nano-stabilised oil in water emulsions. These oil emulsions hindered the oil recovery before breakthrough. However, recovery factor of WAG injection of nano-saturated CO₂ exceeded that of pure CO₂ as those stabilised oil emulsion were produced along with water after breakthrough. The results of this work reveal that saturation of CO₂ with silica nanoparticles can improve the microscopic efficiency of continuous CO₂ injection, while in CO₂ WAG injection this hampers oil recovery before water breakthrough. [Received: November 10, 2013; Accepted: April 25, 2014]

Online publication date: Wed, 18-Mar-2015

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