Sharif Digital Repository

This study aims to elucidate the impact of salinity on the interactions governing the adsorption of polar aromatic oil compounds onto calcite. To this end, molecular dynamics simulations were employed to assess adsorption of a model polar organic molecule (deprotonated benzoic acid, benzoate) on the calcite surface in NaCl brines of different concentration levels, namely, deionized water (DW), low-salinity water (LS, 5000 ppm), and sea water (SW; 45,000 ppm). Calcite was found to be completely covered by several well-ordered water layers. The top hydration layer is very compact and prevents direct adsorption of benzoates onto the substrate. Instead, Na+ ions form a distinct positively... 

Foam flooding has been applied as a promising method in enhanced oil recovery to obviate the challenges of gas flooding such as fingering, channeling and overriding. However, long-term foam stability is crucial for mobility control. In this work, the effective mechanisms on foam stability in the presence of CaCO3 nanoparticles were assessed both theoretically and experimentally. The static and dynamic behaviors of cationic surfactant (HTAB) foam in the presence of CaCO3 nanoparticles with different hydrophobicity were evaluated. The CaCO3 nanoparticles were treated with a series of long-chain fatty acids to generate a range of wettability. Afterward, the underlying mechanisms were revealed... 

A new type of collapsible soil was encountered in Southern Iran and caused some serious technical problems including subsidence, collapse and sinkholes during the construction of Zahedan-Chabahar railway. Field observations indicated that in-situ soil contains excessive amount of salts resulting in dispersive features in response to seepage forces in addition to its collapsibility. Therefore, a systematic research plan including field sampling and laboratory testing was carried out to investigate the observed geotechnical features. Results of physio-chemical tests revealed the dominance of Sodium in excess of 70% relative to total dissolved salts, which results in high dispersive potential.... 

As an important precursor of crystalline phases, amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC), especially ultrasmall ACC clusters, have been attracting great interest in fundamental research, materials chemistry, as well as industrial applications. However, it is still challenging to synthesize stable ACC clusters in water that can be isolated and concentrated without severe aggregation. Herein, we report a facile dialysis method for producing colloidally stable ACC clusters that are well dispersed in water with the protection of specific polycarboxylic acids, which could be also easily deprotected by small-molecule acids like sodium citrate. Inherent proto-calcite short-range order is found to be... 

Wettability alteration as the main mechanism of improved oil recovery in carbonates during low salinity/engineered water flooding (LS/EWF) is a complex phenomenon due to high heterogeneity of rock. During LS/EWF, wettability changes when electrochemical interactions at carbonate-brine interface happen. Anhydrite impurity in carbonates is one of the most important parameters affecting the electrochemical interactions at the rock-brine interface and the wettability alteration process. Therefore, the success of LS/EWF in carbonate reservoirs lies in perceiving the role of impurities such as anhydrite, from a geochemical and dissolution point of view. Modified flotation tests (MFT) were... 

Copper anode (∼98%) is widely used to produce the cathode (99.995 wt%) in electrorefining process. These anodes sometimes become problematic from the production line due to the presence of bumps/holes on their surface. To find the reason of this defect, chemical composition of the three casted anodes was determined by the quantmeter analysis. Also, the microscopic and phase analysis were done by FESEM, EDS, XRD, and XRF for three types of anodes bump. The chemical analysis of anodes confirmed a high level of sulfur and oxygen, which have a key role in the formation of bumps. The results confirmed the presence of impurities including Cu2S, BaSO4, CaCO3 and MgCO3, which cause the formation of... 

As an important precursor of crystalline phases, amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC), especially ultrasmall ACC clusters, have been attracting great interest in fundamental research, materials chemistry, as well as industrial applications. However, it is still challenging to synthesize stable ACC clusters in water that can be isolated and concentrated without severe aggregation. Herein, we report a facile dialysis method for producing colloidally stable ACC clusters that are well dispersed in water with the protection of specific polycarboxylic acids, which could be also easily deprotected by small-molecule acids like sodium citrate. Inherent proto-calcite short-range order is found to be... 

Calcite is among the most abundant minerals organizing the oil reservoir formation and therefore its surface properties play a central role in the increase of the oil recovery efficiency. The effect of low-salinity water in carbonate rocks reveals that brine composition and salinity can improve the oil recovery in carbonates through wettability alteration. However, the specific mechanism for wettability changes that leads to improved oil recovery in calcite is not well understood. To obtain deeper insights at atomic level into the understanding the characteristics of the calcite-water interface, we performed classical molecular dynamics simulations in the presence of different ions in brine... 

Recently, application of silica nanoparticles (SNP) for enhancing oil recovery during water flooding has been much attended. However, understanding how rock and nanoparticles (NP) interacts through adsorption onto the carbonate reservoir rocks is not well discussed. In this work, adsorption behavior of SNP onto the calcite had been characterized, through kinetic, equilibrium, thermodynamics and electrokinetic studies as well as interaction energy analysis by DLVO theory. Also, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) was utilized to visualize the adsorption process. It had been found that kinetic behavior of SNP-calcite system followed the pseudo-second order model. Equilibrium... 

The modification of the surface wetting characteristics in fractured oil-wet carbonate reservoirs, by reversing wettability from oil-wet to water-wet, leads to improved oil recovery. However, in order to obtain a successful oil recovery process, it is crucial to understand the active mechanisms of wettability alteration. This study looks at the effect of sulfate ions as one of the most promising wettability influencing ions on the wetting properties of oil-wet calcite; the effect is studied both with and without the presence of cationic surfactant and possible mechanisms of wettability alteration are explored. A number of analytical techniques were utilized to analyze the mineral surface... 

Oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs can be enhanced by altering the wettability from oil-wet toward water-wet state. Recently, silica nanoparticle (SNP) suspensions are considered as an attractive wettability alteration agent in enhanced oil recovery applications. However, their performance along with the underlying mechanism for wettability alteration in carbonate rocks is not well discussed. In this work, the ability of SNP suspensions, in the presence/absence of salt, to alter the wettability of oil-wet calcite substrates to a water-wet condition was investigated. In the first step, to ensure that the properties of nanofluids have not been changed during the tests, stability analysis... 

We used density functional theory (DFT) and Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics (CPMD) simulation to investigate the adsorption and bond formation of hydronium ion (H3O+) onto a (10 1 ¯ 4) calcite surface. For surface coverage of 25% to 100%, the nature of H3O+ interaction was explored through electron density and energetics in the context of bond critical points. The adsorbate–adsorbent structure was studied by simulation of pair correlation function. The results revealed that dissociation into water molecule(s) and proton(s) complements H3O+ ion(s) adsorbtion. The H2O molecule adsorbs onto the surface via its O atom, and interacts with surface calcium in a closed-shell mode; the H+ ion makes... 

The high reactivity of the carbonate rocks at various pH makes it difficult to evaluate the wettability, hence to find the recovery mechanisms behind modified waterflood in carbonate reservoirs. More recently, the streaming potential measurement is introduced as a method of electrokinetic phenomena more relevant to the subsurface systems. Regarding few experimental studies and in order to improve our understanding on streaming potential measurement, the electrokinetic studies on quartz and calcite surface were conducted as a function of pH in the range of 1.5–11.5 using an in-house novel setup of streaming potential measurement. High sensitivity of streaming potential coupling coefficient to... 

We determined the mechanism of mechanochemical synthesis of fluorapatite from CaO, CaF2 and P2O5 by characterisation of the intermediate compounds. We used atomic absorption spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, field emission scanning electron microscopy, FTIR spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy to find the transitional compounds. Investigation of the binary and ternary powder mixtures revealed the appearance of H3PO4, Ca(OH)2, Ca2P2O7 and CaCO3 as the intermediate compounds. At early stages of the milling, conversions of P2O5 to H3PO4 and CaO to Ca(OH)2 occurred in the wet atmosphere. Later, a combination of Ca(OH)2 and H3PO4 formed Ca2P2O7 while the unreacted CaO was converted to... 

Alumina nanofluids are one of the most useful nanofluids, especially for increasing the thermal conductivity. Due to importance of porous media in the improvement of heat transfer, this study investigates the transport and retention of gamma alumina/water nanofluid in the water-saturated porous media. For this purpose, alumina nanofluids were introduced to the porous media consisting of water-saturated glass beads possessing various pH values (4, 7 and 10) and different ionic strengths (0.001 M of KCl, CaCl2, AlCl3, K2SO4, CaSO4, Al2(SO4)3, K2CO3 and CaCO3). Then the break through curve of each experiment was drawn and modeled by combining classical filtration theory with... 

Wettability alteration of rock surfaces toward gas wetting have been recognized as a practical approach for maximizing the production from the gas condensate reservoirs. Most of the reported work in this area applied the so called sessile drop contact angle measurement technique to examine the change in wetting state of a surface. However, the size-dependent wetting behavior of drop which could affect the exact determination of wettability and wettability changes was not well discussed in the previous studies. Therefore, in this work, the size dependency of contact angle for four different liquid-solid-gas systems; i.e., water-calcite-air, water-treated calcite-air (nanofluid treated... 

In this article, a confined-impinging-jets reactor (CIJR) was designed and tested successfully for the synthesis of calcium carbonate nanoparticles using the reactive precipitation method. The proposed CIJR comprised of two opposed nozzles placed in a cylindrical chamber. Effects of various operating and design parameters such as supersaturation, feed flow rate, nozzle diameter, reactor diameter, operating temperature, and surface-active agents on the mean particle size, particle size distribution, and the polymorphs of calcium carbonate nanoparticles were investigated carefully. By changing the supersaturation, reactor diameter, jets velocity, operating temperature, and the nozzle diameter,... 

In this work, sessile drop and low-bond axisymmetric drop shape analysis methods were coupled to provide some new aspects on stick-slip behavior as well as stick time of a drop on calcite surfaces. Slightly hydrophobic calcite surfaces typified with three irregular roughnesses were used to create irregular surfaces to mimic defects for the water-calcite-air systems. Polishing papers of 200, 600, and 1200 grit and a polishing machine were used to prepare surfaces. X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared, and atomic force microscopy techniques were employed to evaluate the chemical and physical properties of surfaces. A model was developed to predict... 

Dynamic contact angle measurement; as a standard method for surface wettability analysis, is usually conducted through the analysis of sessile drops formed following the low rate injection of fluid from beneath through a drilled hole via an injection needle. However, understanding/characterizing the changes of drop contact angle from the point where the flat solid surface begins is not well discussed yet. Moreover, during the evaluation of size-dependent behavior of contact angle of millimeter-scale drops, the effect of the drilled hole is ignored. In this regard, in the current study, the experimental and thermodynamic characterizations of the sessile drop advancing contact angle... 

Characterization and calcination behavior of a low-grade manganese ore, as a part of Mn ferroalloys production, was studied by XRF, ex-situ XRD, in-situ XRD, and SEM-EDS techniques. Calcination experiments were carried out at and up to 900 °C (1173 K) in air and argon atmospheres. The samples were in particles and powder forms. The results indicated that both quartz and calcite phases in the ore exhibit a bimodal spatial distribution; as relatively large regions and finely distributed in the Mn- and Fe-containing phases. By Rietveld analysis of the in-situ XRD data, the reactions occurring upon heating during the calcination process were deduced. Thermal decomposition and reactive diffusion...