Flow Driven Oil Recovery Enhanced with Structural Disjoining Pressure

TL;DR

This study investigates how nanofluids, specifically Triton X-100 micelle nanofluids, enhance oil recovery by leveraging structural disjoining pressure in a microfluidic porous network, showing increased displacement with higher nanoparticle concentration.

Contribution

The paper introduces a model microfluidic system to quantify oil displacement by nanofluids and highlights the role of surface heterogeneity in nanofluid performance.

Findings

Oil displacement increases nearly linearly with nanoparticle volume fraction.

Significant variability suggests surface energy heterogeneity impacts efficiency.

Maximum displacement reached 89% at 30% nanofluid volume fraction.

Abstract

Nanofluids have the potential to enhance oil recovery through the structural disjoining pressure, a pressure developed when nanoparticles concentrate at the three-phase contact line. A model microfluidic porous network is used to measure the percentage of oil displaced from this channel as the volume fraction of a Triton X-100 micelle nanofluid is varied from 0 - 30%. The percentage of oil displaced varies nearly linearly with micellar nanoparticle volume fraction starting with 39% using deionized water and 89% using a volume fraction of 30%. While the trend is clear, significant variability between experiments was observed for a fixed nanofluid volume fraction. This indicates that surface energy heterogeneity is important for the nanofluid oil displacement performance.