POTENTIAL OF SILICA NANOPARTICLES UTILIZATION IN SURFACTANT FLOODING BASED ON CAPILLARY NUMBER VALUES

• Main Author: Hartowo, Harry
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/54644
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Oil recovery factor (RF) is the main indicator that determines the amount of oil that can be extracted from existing reservoirs. Many oil fields in various parts of the world unfortunately have experienced a decline in production due to the declining value of the RF. Enhanced oil recovery, or EOR is now a technology that is commonly used to increase the amount of recoverable volumes of hydrocarbons to be produced. One of the EOR techniques is to utilize the chemical surfactant to lower the interfacial tension of oil and water. However, the use of EOR techniques with surfactant uneconomical because costly. On the other hand, the addition of SiO2 nanoparticles into non anionic surfactant Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS) and oil was proven to reduce the interfacial tension between oil and solution (Zargartalebi, 2015), as well as proven to reduce the amount of adsorption losses of SDS surfactant on rock surface (Ahmadi, 2013). Moreover, the addition of nanoparticles also has the purpose of altering formation wettability into more water wetting, thus makes oil flow more easily through the porous media. In this study, the effect of adding SiO2 nanoparticles to increase the level of surfactant injection efficiency was analyzed based on the value of capillary number (Nc). This study also discussed the economic value compared to the EOR surfactant EOR surfactant + nanoparticles through the analysis of NPV and oil price limit. In order to achieve these objectives, interfacial tension (IFT) and related field data is processed to obtain the value Nc. The amount of the microscopic displacement efficiency (Ed) can be determined by analyzing the capillary number of each nanofluid. While the value of volumetric sweep efficiency (Ev) is sought through field data by correlation. The optimum RF can then be determined from the value Ed and Ev obtained previously. Then, the economic analysis for NPV and made to limit oil price nanofluid with the most optimum RF value to determine the economic efficiency of each method.