SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, June 22: A three members research team of IIT Indian School of Mines (ISM) Dhanbad has made a major breakthrough in tracing oil lying trapped in pores of rock.
The team of the Petroleum Engineering department under Prof Ajay Kumar Mandal has conducted a research that can ensure the recovery of trapped oil reservoirs using Nanoparticles. Nitish Kumar Mourya (assistant professor) and Dinesh Modi (junior research fellow) were other members of the team.
The research that was funded by the Institute of Reservoir Studies (IRS), ONGC Ahmedabad and conducted during 2019-21 has revealed that the use of Nanoparticles can increase oil recovery up to the tune of 7% or more.
Dr Ajay Kumar Mandal said only around 20-30% of oil can be recovered easily from the reservoir while the recovery of the remaining 70-80% trapped oil requires additional impetus in the form of water, chemical injection or thermal methods.
Dr Mandal said that the research team visited the IRS ONGC Ahmedabad thrice during the research to collect information and also to collect crude oil, formation water and rock samples. “The usage of Nanoparticles which can travel deep into the rocks enhances recovery of trapped oil by mobilizing the oil droplets into the production well”, he said.
Dr Mandal said In the first step experimental investigation to screen suitable Nanoparticles for oil recovery (EOR) was carried out during which the team found that silica Nanoparticles and Nanofluid were stable at oil reservoir conditions as it provides favourable interaction with reservoir rock and fluid for oil recovery.
“In the second step, we designed the chemical slug so that Nanoparticles can be injected into the oil reservoir or in synergy with surfactant and other chemicals. The chemical slugs were then tested for wet ability improvement, Interfacial tension reduction”, explained DrMandal.
Assistant professor Nitish Kumar Maurya said in the final step, the actual potential of incremental oil recovery was established by injecting these chemical slugs into small rocks and reservoir rocks.
“Outcome of this research established that we can further improve the efficiency of the chemical injection process in oilfields by using Nanomaterial for oil recovery,” said Maurya.
