Sharif Digital Repository

Nitrogen has emerged as a competitive gas injection alternative for gas-based enhanced oil recovery processes in the past two decades. The injection of nitrogen into the reservoirs has improved the oil recovery efficiency in various oil reservoirs from heavy to volatile oils. As it is known, interfacial tension (IFT) plays a key role in any enhanced oil recovery process, particularly gas injection processes; therefore, its accurate determination is crucial for the design of any gas injection process especially at reservoir condition. In this study, an axisymmetric drop shape analysis (ADSA) was utilized to measure the equilibrium IFTs between crude oil and N2 at different temperature levels... 

Injecting low salinity brines is regarded as an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process through IFT reduction. However, the exact mechanism behind this process is an unsettled and complex issue that has not been well understood yet, especially for heavy crude oil system. Besides, limited information is available regarding the key heavy oil/brine interfacial tension (IFT). The present study aims to investigate the sensitivity of dead heavy crude oil/brine IFT to a wide range of properties/conditions and to reveal the underlying physicochemical mechanisms involved in enhanced oil recovery and IFT reduction by low salinity water injection into heavy oil reservoir. IFT was measured as a function of... 

Interfacial tension (IFT) as one of the main properties for efficient CO2 flooding planning in oil reservoirs depends strongly on pressure, temperature, and composition of the reservoir fluids. Therefore, it is important to measure this property at real reservoir conditions for successful field development plan. In this study, an axisymmetric drop shape analysis (ADSA) has been utilized to measure the equilibrium IFTs between crude oil and CO2 at different temperatures and pressures. Moreover, minimum miscibility pressures (MMP) and first-contact miscibility pressures (P max) of crude oil/CO2 systems at different temperatures are determined by applying the vanishing interfacial tension (VIT)... 

It is well known that the displacement efficiency of EOR processes is mainly affected by wettability of porous medium; however, the role of nanoparticles on wettability alteration of pores surfaces remains a topic of debate in the literature. Furthermore, a little is known about how the dispersed silica nanoparticles affect the microscopic/macroscopic recovery efficiency of heavy oils during common immiscible EOR processes such as water flooding. In this study, a series of injection experiments was performed on five-spot glass micromodel which is initially saturated with the heavy oil. Distilled water and dispersed silica nanoparticles in water (DSNW) at different values of weight percent... 

This paper presents a new inference algorithm for active learning method (ALM). ALM is a pattern-based algorithm for soft computing, which uses the ink drop spread (IDS) algorithm as its main engine for feature extraction. In this paper, a fuzzy number is extracted from each IDS plane rather than from the narrow path and the spread, as in previous approaches. This leads to a significant reduction in the hardware required to implement the inference part of the algorithm and real-time computation of the implemented hardware. A modified version of the memristor crossbar structure is used to solve the problem of varying shapes of the ink drops, as reported in previous studies. In order to... 

Vertically aligned ZnO nanowires (NWs) hybridized with reduced graphene oxide sheets (rGO) were applied in efficient visible light photoinactivation of bacteria. To incorporate graphene oxide (GO) sheets within the NWs two different methods of drop-casting and electrophoretic deposition (EPD) were utilized. The EPD method yielded effective penetration of the positively charged GO sheets into the NWs to form a spider net-like structure, whereas the drop-casting method resulted in only a surface coverage of the GO sheets on top of the NWs. The electrical connection between the EPD-incorporated sheets and the NWs was checked by monitoring the electron transfer from UV-assisted photoexcited ZnO... 

Injecting low salinity brines is regarded as an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process through IFT reduction. However, the exact mechanism behind this process is an unsettled and complex issue that has not been well understood yet, especially for heavy crude oil system. Besides, limited information is available regarding the key heavy oil/brine interfacial tension (IFT). The present study aims to investigate the sensitivity of dead heavy crude oil/brine IFT to a wide range of properties/conditions and to reveal the underlying physicochemical mechanisms involved in enhanced oil recovery and IFT reduction by low salinity water injection into heavy oil reservoir. IFT was measured as a function of... 

The interfacial tension (IFT) of a crude oil/CO2 system is recognized as the main property affecting the efficiency of CO2 flooding during an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process. The addition of a paraffin group hydrocarbon to asphaltenic crude oils as an asphaltene precipitant component is aimed to mimic the asphaltene precipitation process during crude oil production and transportation. Asphaltene precipitation would critically affect the interfacial behavior of crude oil/CO2 systems. In the first part of this study, the equilibrium densities of oil samples which contain n-heptane at different ratios were measured over varying pressures at 323 K. Then, the equilibrium IFT between CO2 and... 

Long-time interaction of dewetting nanodroplets is investigated using a long-wave approximation method. Although three-dimensional (3D) droplets evolution dynamics exhibits qualitative behavior analogous to two-dimensional (2D) dynamics, there is an extensive quantitative difference between them. 3D dynamics is substantially faster than 2D dynamics. This can be related to the larger curvature and, as a consequence, the larger Laplace pressure difference between the droplets in 3D systems. The influence of various chemical heterogeneities on the behavior of droplets has also been studied. In the case of gradient surfaces, it is shown how the gradient direction could change the dynamics. For a... 

Although CO2 injection significantly increases the amount of oil recovered, it can cause asphaltene deposition in oil reservoirs. Asphaltene deposition leads to formation damage, in which treatment is a costly and problematic operation. In this work, impact of asphaltene precipitation and deposition during CO2 injection are investigated for recombined oil both in sandstone and carbonate core samples through dynamic flow experiments. Injection of oil and CO2 was performed simultaneously. Then, pressure drops along the core were recorded continuously to estimate permeability reductions during the experiments. Online viscosity of injected fluid was measured by a designed capillary viscometer.... 

This paper deals with computational and experimental studies on the oscillatory flow at high frequencies up to 100. Hz performed with the Oscillating Drop and Bubble Analyzer (ODBA) setup based on the capillary pressure technique. The CFD results are validated considering pressure amplitude experimental data. The simulated results of phase shift between the generated oscillatory flow and the consequent pressure amplitudes show also good agreement with the experimental data. In absence of any compressibility and viscoelasticity effects and assumptions, a complex velocity field during oscillation is the main reason for the observation of a phase shift. The results of velocity profiles at the... 

The present investigation is devoted to the fully developed slip flow mixed convection in vertical microducts of two different cross sections, namely, polygon, with circle as a limiting case, and rectangle. The two axially constant heat flux boundary conditions of H1 and H2 are considered in the analysis. The velocity and temperature discontinuities at the boundary are incorporated into the solutions using the first-order slip boundary conditions. The method considered is mainly analytical in which the governing equations in cylindrical coordinates along with the symmetry conditions and finiteness of the flow parameter at the origin are exactly satisfied. The first-order slip boundary... 

In this paper, an analytical solution for steady creeping motion of viscoelastic drop falling through a viscous Newtonian fluid is presented. The Oldroyd-B model is used as the constitutive equation. The analytical solutions for both interior and exterior flows are obtained using the perturbation method. Deborah number and capillary numbers are considered as the perturbation parameters. The effect of viscoelastic properties on drop shape and motion are studied in detail. The previous empirical studies indicated that unlike the Newtonian creeping drop in which the drop shape is exactly spherical, a dimpled shape appears in viscoelastic drops. It is shown that the results of the present... 

The inflow pattern of liquid into a droplet is studied experimentally using a surface active dye and compared with results of CFD simulations. The results show visual agreement between experiments and simulations. The CFD simulations show also good agreement with the surface tension measured by drop profile analysis tensiometry (PAT). The inflow of the surfactant induces a Marangoni instability caused by the local arrival of the surfactant at the drop surface. The onset of this Marangoni instability observed experimentally has a delay of about 10. s when compared with the simulation results. Different scenarios are discussed, including a boundary layer barrier, a kinetic-controlled... 

The turbulent heat transfer in gas-solid flows through an inclined pipe under various inclination angles is studied with constant wall heat flux. The hydrodynamic k- τ and kθ- τθ thermal two phase model is used in a lagrangian/Eulerian four way approach. The numerical results agreed reasonably with available experimental data in vertical and horizontal pipe flows. The effects of inclination angles on the flow patterns are reported. The pressure drop and Nusselt number are enhanced significantly as the inclination increases up to a certain angle. The mass loading ratio has influence on the optimal inclination angle. With increasing loading ratio, the optimal inclination angle of maximum... 

Mixing in droplets is an essential task in a variety of microfluidic systems. Inspired by electrokinetic mixing, electric field-induced hydrodynamic flow inside a charged droplet embedded in an unbounded polyelectrolyte hydrogel is investigated theoretically. In this study, the polyelectrolyte hydrogel is modeled as a soft, and electrically charged porous solid saturated with a salted Newtonian fluid, and the droplet is considered an incompressible Newtonian fluid. The droplet-hydrogel interface is modeled as a surface, which is located at the plane of shear, with the electrostatic potential ζ. The fluid inside the droplet attains a finite velocity owing to hydrodynamic coupling with the... 

In this paper, the ball valve performance is numerically simulated using an unstructured CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) code based on the finite volume method. Navier-Stokes equations in addition to a transport equation for the vapor volume fraction were coupled in the RANS solver. Separation is modeled very well with a modification of turbulent viscosity. The results of CFD calculations of flow through a ball valve, based on the concept of experimental data, are described and analyzed. Comparison of the flow pattern at several opening angles is investigated. Pressure drop behind the ball valve and formation of the vortex flow downstream the valve section are also discussed. As the... 

In the present work, the oscillation of a spark-created bubble near a confined water-air interface and the ensuing droplet generation and ejection are studied numerically using the boundary element method. The interface is accorded by the top opening of either one of the following symmetrical configurations, which are distinguished by the value of angle between their vertical symmetry axis and lateral wall (i.e., θ): (i) a centrally perforated horizontal flat plate (θ = 90°) and (ii) vertically placed cylinder (θ = 0°), nozzle (θ > 0°) and diffuser (θ < 0°). Furthermore, the influences of the effective parameters such as the strength parameter (i.e., the intensity of local energy input), the... 

The fully developed longitudinal slip-flow mixed convection between a periodic bunch of vertical microcylinders arrangedin regular arraysis investigated inthe present work. The two axially constant heat flux boundary conditions of H1 and H2 are considered in the analysis. The rarefaction effects are taken into consideration using first-order slip velocity and temperature jump boundary conditions. The method considered is mainly analytical, in that the governing equations and three of the boundary conditions are exactly satisfied. The remaining symmetry condition on the right-hand boundary of the typical element is applied to the solution through the point-matching technique. The results... 

Dynamic interfacial parameters are the key properties of interfaces in many modern technologies and can be studied in various ways. For applications like foams and emulsions, the dynamics of adsorption and the dilational and shear rheology of liquid-fluid interfaces are investigated most frequently. This work gives an insight into recently developed new experimental approaches, such as fast capillary pressure tensiometry for growing and oscillating drops. These experiments are presented in comparison to more classical techniques like drop profile tensiometry and capillary wave damping. Progress in these experiments based on generated interfacial perturbations can be expected only by a close...