Nanofluid of graphene-based amphiphilic Janus nanosheets for tertiary or enhanced oil recovery: High performance at low concentration

Journal Article · Mon Jun 27 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1608135113· OSTI ID:1259730

Luo, Dan ^[1]; Wang, Feng ^[2]; Zhu, Jingyi ^[3]; Cao, Feng ^[2]; Liu, Yuan ^[2]; Li, Xiaogang ^[3]; Willson, Richard C. ^[4]; Yang, Zhaozhong ^[3]; Chu, Ching-Wu ^[5]; Ren, Zhifeng ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics and Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204,, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204,, State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610500, China,
2. Department of Physics and Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204,
3. State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, Sichuan 610500, China,
4. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204,, Departamento de Biotecnología e Ingeniería de Alimentos, Tecnologico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon 64849, Mexico,
5. Department of Physics and Texas Center for Superconductivity, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204,, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720

Significance Improving crude oil recovery by 1% worldwide would result in a huge amount of crude oil resources becoming available. However, the economic and environmental concerns are too serious to ignore when chemical methods (surfactants or polymers flooding, etc.) are used for an average 10–20% enhancement for tertiary oil recovery. Simple nanofluid (containing only nanoparticles) flooding at low concentration (0.01 wt % or less) is a promising alternative, but the efficiency is below 5% in a saline environment (2 wt % or higher NaCl content). We report a simple nanofluid of graphene-based Janus amphiphilic nanosheets for enhanced oil recovery with efficiency of about 15.2%, comparable to chemical methods, which is both economically and environmentally beneficial to the petroleum industry.

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: FG02-13ER46917; SC0010831
• OSTI ID: 1259730
• Journal Information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Vol. 113 Journal Issue: 28; ISSN 0027-8424
• Publisher: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English