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Conflict of Interest: In relation to this article, we declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Publication history: Received August 27, 2013
Accepted October 14, 2013

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Enhanced oil recovery using nanoparticle-stabilized oil/water emulsions

Hanam Son^{1 2} Hyuntae Kim¹ Geunju Lee^3† Jinwoong Kim³ Wonmo Sung²

¹Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, Daejeon 305-350, Korea ²Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 133-791, Korea ³Department of Applied Chemistry, Hanyang University, Ansan 426-791, Korea

dreamergj@gmail.com

Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering, February 2014, 31(2), 338-342(5), 10.1007/s11814-013-0214-5

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Abstract

We experimentally investigated nanoparticle-stabilized emulsions for enhanced oil recovery(EOR) applications. The emulsions were injected into a silica bead column containing mineral oil, and the oil recovery was calculated using a mass-balance approach. The experiments were carried out as follows: 1) The emulsions were injected into a column with 100% water saturation to investigate the mobility of the water and emulsions, 2) Water flooding was then carried out at initial oil and water saturation, and the emulsion flooding was injected to calculate the enhancement in the oil recovery rate. The results indicate that the nanoparticle-stabilized emulsions increased the oil recovery rate by 11% after water flooding. The mechanism for this is attributed to a greater pressure difference across the porous medium, leading to oil remaining in the pores being produced via a piston effect. These results indicate that nanoparticle-stabilized_x000D_ emulsions may be effective EOR agents.

Keywords

Nanoparticle-stabilized Emulsions Oil-in-water Emulsions Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Water Flooding Silica Bead Column

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