LABORATORY STUDY OF SALINITY EFFECT ON NANO-SILICA ABILITY IN IMPROVING THE WETTABILITY OF SANDSTONE

• Main Author: Lanang Yudhismara, Dwindo
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Pertambangan dan operasi berkaitan
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/52010
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The condition of oil fields in Indonesia, which are predominantly marginal fields, continue to experience a decline in production, and along with the increase in population growth, they further drive the increase in energy demand. The need for innovative methods development to increase oil production is become urgently required. Nanotechnology, which is one of the new developed methods, provides new promising approaches that can be applied to the oil and gas industry. This method refers to the application of nanoparticles, which are very small particles in size compared to the pore throat size, that can easily move and flow into porous rocks without severe influence on permeability. In addition, due to of its relatively small size, nanoparticles have a large contact surface area which gives their interactions with a surface more reactive and effective, compare to the usual ones in the same volume unit. This causes the nanoparticles to be able to improve the nature of rock wettability by coating the rock and making it more water-wet so that oil can be more easily separated from the rock surface and of course, increases the oil recovery. Because nanoparticles are solids, they need based fluids that can carry and flow nanoparticles through porous media and Brine is one of the based fluids that can be used. However, it is feared that the salinity contained in the brine might affect the performance of the nanoparticles in improving the rock wettability. In this thesis, research on the salinity effect on nano-silica and brine solutions ability in the wettability improvement of sandstone is conducted. Nano-silica was chosen as the nanoparticles used in this study due to of its major advantages. The silica particles come from quartz sand, which is a material that is easily to be found everywhere, has a relatively cheaper price, and it is more environmentally friendly compare to other chemicals. Validation of the hypothesis in this study was proven by using contact angle measurement and spontaneous imbibition test. Contact angle test is a method that used to determine the wettability charactiristic of a rock pore surface. Meanwhile,spontaneous imbibition test is used to determine the relationship between the wettability of the rock and the recovery of the oil. The test results show that there is a decrease in the contact angle that was formed and oil recovery value obtained in samples using nanofluid solutions with different salinity. On the sample that using 1000 ppm salinity nanofluids as the wetting phase or displacing fluids, the resulting contact angle was 168o with 82% of the oil recovey. However, in the nanofluid solution sample with a salinity of 10,000 ppm, the result of contact angle that was formed by the oil droplets and rock surface is decreased to 121o with and with oil recovery of 66%. This proves that there is an effect caused by the brine salinity on nano-silica ability to improve the rock wettability which also affect the percentage of oil recovery value. Salinity with a deviation of 9000 ppm can reduce the effectiveness of nano-silica in rock wettability alterion up to 36% and reduce oil recovery by 16% utmost.