CO2/N2-Responsive Nanoparticles for Enhanced Oil Recovery During CO2 Flooding

Nanjun Lai; Qingru Zhu; Dongyu Qiao; Ke Chen; Dongdong Wang; Lei Tang; Gang Chen

doi:10.3389/fchem.2020.00393

CO₂/N₂-Responsive Nanoparticles for Enhanced Oil Recovery During CO₂ Flooding

Front Chem. 2020 May 21:8:393. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2020.00393. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Nanjun Lai^{1

2

3}, Qingru Zhu^{1

3}, Dongyu Qiao⁴, Ke Chen⁵, Dongdong Wang^{1

3}, Lei Tang^{1

3}, Gang Chen^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Geology and Exploitation of Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, China.
³ Oil and Gas Field Applied Chemistry Key Laboratory of Sichuan Province, Chengdu, China.
⁴ Engineer Technology Research Institute, CNPC Xibu Drilling Engineering Company Limited, Urumqi, China.
⁵ China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) Energy Development Company Limited, Tianjin, China.

Abstract

During CO₂ flooding, serious gas channeling occurs in ultra-low permeability reservoirs due to the high mobility of CO₂. The chief end of this work was to research the application of responsive nanoparticles for mobility control to enhance oil recovery. Responsive nanoparticles were developed based on the modification of nano-silica (SiO₂) by 3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (KH540) via the Eschweiler-Clark reaction. The proof of concept for responsive nanoparticles was investigated by FT-IR, ¹H-NMR, TEM, DLS, CO₂/N₂ response, wettability, plugging performance, and core flooding experiments. The results indicated that responsive nanoparticles exhibited a good response to control nanoparticle dispersity due to electrostatic interaction. Subsequently, responsive nanoparticles showed a better plugging capacity of 93.3% to control CO₂ mobility, and more than 26% of the original oil was recovered. Moreover, the proposed responsive nanoparticles could revert oil-wet surfaces to water-wet, depending on surface adsorption to remove the oil from the surface of the rocks. The results of this work indicated that responsive nanoparticles might have potential applications for improved oil recovery in ultra-low permeability reservoirs.

Keywords: CO2 flooding; enhanced oil recovery; mobility control; plugging; responsive nano-SiO2.