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Experimental Investigation of Improvement of Stability and Performance of Foam Using Nano-particles to Enhance Oil Recovery

Veyskarami, Maziar | 2017

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 49383 (06)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Chemical and Petroleum Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Ghazanfari, Mohammad Hossein
  7. Abstract:
  8. Using foam for reducing undesirable effects of fingering and gravity segregation in enhanced oil recovery through gas injection has attracted a rapidly increasing interest in recent years. Lack of stability of foam often limits its application. However there is a lack of systematic study of effects of unmodified and in-situ modified silica nano-particle on foam stability and foam behavior in the presence and absence of oil and also polymer effects from the prospective of analysis of foam dynamic stability, size of foam bubbles, and foam flow behavior in Hele – Shaw cell. Main objectives of this study are mechanistic investigation of effects of polymer – surfactant systems and in-situ modified nano-particle on foam behavior in the presence and absence of oil. Our experiments indicate that: weakly interacting surfactant – polymer system shows greater dynamic stability in the absence and presence of oil, weakly interacting system and strongly interacting system have similar effects on bubble stability of foam and as polymer concentration increases, stability of foam bubbles increases as well. Increasing polymer concentration causes increasing bubble size and lamella thickness of the foam. At low polymer concentration, foam bubbles are highly unstable in the presence of oil, but at higher polymer concentration the foam bubbles are as stable as the bubbles in the absence of oil. Foam flow tests in Hele – Shaw cell indicate that increasing polymer concentration at first decreases apparent viscosity of foam and then increases it. Our analysis show that in-situ modified silica nano-particle, improves foam behavior more than unmodified silica nano-particle in the presence of oil. In the last section, foam flow model is applied to investigate the effects of nano-particle, on the contributions to apparent viscosity of foam. It was found that nano-particle has the most impact on contribution of deformation of foam bubbles to apparent viscosity. Results of this study could help better understanding of how nano-particle and surfactant – polymer systems effect the foam behavior
  9. Keywords:
  10. Silica Nanoparticles ; Hele-Shaw Cell ; Enhanced Oil Recovery ; Foam Dynamic Stability ; Polymer-Surfactant Systems ; Foam Apparent Viscosity

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