Impact of Integrating Nanoparticles with Hydrocarbon Solvent on Enhanced Heavy Oil Recovery

Solvent-based enhanced oil recovery has received greater attention lately. Besides solvents, nanoparticles, due to their unique characteristics have also been widely used for enhanced oil recovery techniques to help extract the trapped oil left underneath the surface. This work investigated the effects of nano-silica (SiO2) and xylene, as a nanoparticle (NP) and solvent, respectively, on the viscosity of heavy crude oil. Several variables were considered to obtain a large reduction in the oil viscosity to improve oil production, including temperature, shear rate, the weight fraction of xylene as a diluent, and concentration of SiO2 NPs. A Brookfield viscometer was applied to assess the viscosity of crude oil, and it was found that integrating NPs with solvent significantly reduced the total viscosity of the oil to 32 cP when NPs were used vs. 65 cP when the solvent was added alone.