A review on applications of nanotechnology in the enhanced oil recovery part B: effects of nanoparticles on flooding

Abstract

Chemical enhanced oil recovery is another strong growing technology with the potential of a step change innovation, which will help to secure future oil supply by turning resources into reserves. While Substan-tial amount of crude oil remains in the reservoir after pri-mary and secondary production, conventional production methods give access to on average only one-third of orig-inal oil in place, the use of surfactants and polymers allows for recovery of up to another third of this oil. Chemical flooding is of increasing interest and importance due to high oil prices and the need to increase oil production. Research in nanotechnology in the petroleum industry is advancing rapidly and an enormous progress in the appli-cation of nanotechnology in this area is to be expected. Nanotechnology has the potential to profoundly change enhanced oil recovery and to improve mechanism of recovery. This paper, therefore, focuses on the reviews of the application of nano technology in chemical flooding process in oil recovery and reviews the application nano in the polymer and surfactant flooding on the interfacial ten-sion process.