Fuel 143 (2015) 2127

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Fuel
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fuel

Enhancement of surfactant ooding performance by the use of silica

nanoparticles
Mohammad Zargartalebi a,, Riyaz Kharrat b, Nasim Barati a
a
b

Petroleum Engineering Department, Petroleum University of Technology, Ahwaz, Iran

Tehran Petroleum Research Center, Petroleum University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

h i g h l i g h t s
 Surfactant nanoparticle mixtures were studied for enhancing oil recovery purpose.
 Hydrophilic and hydrophobic silica nanoparticles were thoroughly investigated.
 Nanoparticle inclusion into surfactant solution caused unique interfacial behavior.
 Surfactant adsorption onto the rock surface was reduced by nanoparticle addition.
 Oil recovery was remarkably enhanced by addition of silica to surfactant solutions.

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 11 August 2013
Received in revised form 11 November 2014
Accepted 13 November 2014
Available online 26 November 2014
Keywords:
Enhanced oil recovery
Hydrophilic silica nanoparticle
Slightly hydrophobic silica nanoparticle
Surfactant adsorption
Interfacial tension

a b s t r a c t
One of the most signicant current discussions in petroleum industry is the use of nanotechnology to
improve oil recovery. The aim of this study is the implication of silica nanoparticles in combination with
anionic surfactant to see if the surfactant properties are inuenced in the presence of nanoparticles and to
investigate the capability of these particles to enhance oil recovery. Extensive series of interfacial tension
and adsorption measurement experiments were performed. It was observed that surfactant adsorption
amount was mostly reduced when mixed with nanoparticles. Interfacial tension measurements revealed
strange behavior in low and high surfactant concentrations. The optimum conditions for various scenarios of surfactant ooding were selected upon various experimental results. The ooding experiments
showed that nanoparticles could efciently improve surfactant performance by enhancing the governing
mechanisms and the oil recovery was consequently increased by a considerable amount.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Surfactant ooding has been regarded as a potential tertiary oil
recovery technology in depleted reservoirs after water ooding. In
a surfactant ooding process, the residual oil is recovered by
reducing the surface tension between the oil and water phases
[1]. Lower oilwater surface tension reduces the capillary pressure
and water can displace extra oil. Effectiveness of surfactant solution to reduce oilwater interfacial tension (IFT) is impaired by
the adsorption of surfactant in porous media and renders the process unfeasible [2]. Large amount of surfactants is required to produce small amount of extra oil if the adsorption is too high. The
success of this enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method is crucially
Corresponding author at: P.O. Box 1485733111, West Blvd., Near Azadi Sports
Complex, Research Institute of Petroleum Industry, Tehran, Iran. Tel.: +98 916
6082475.
E-mail address: m.zargartalebi@yahoo.com (M. Zargartalebi).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fuel.2014.11.040
0016-2361/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

dependent on surfactant selection. There is a large volume of published studies describing extensive experimental research prior to
implementation of the process to assure that the surfactant properties are suitable for the reservoir of interest [312].
In recent years there has been an increasing interest in application of nanotechnology in petroleum industry. Reservoir engineering, however, have received the most attention for nanotechnology
applications. Nanoparticles have been implemented in different
enhanced oil recovery processes. Wettability alteration effects
and considerable oil recovery were observed for hydrophilic polysilicon nanoparticles [13]. Yu et al. [14] introduced iron-oxide
cored particles with paramagnetic properties as potential EOR
agents of which the behavior can be controlled by imposing an
external magnetic eld. Onyekonwu and Ogolo [15] studied capability of three different polysilicon nanoparticles as an agent for
wettability alteration and oil recovery purposes. Skauge et al.
[16] investigated the oil mobilization properties of nano-sized
silica particles and discussed the underlying mechanism of

22

M. Zargartalebi et al. / Fuel 143 (2015) 2127

Table 1
Physico-chemical properties of nanoparticles used in this study.
Property

Unit

Typical value for AEROSIL300

Typical value for AEROSILR816

Behavior in the presence of water

Appearance
BET surface area
Average primary particle size
Tamped density
PH value
C-content
SiO2
Al2O3
Fe2O3
TiO2
HCI

m2/g
nm
gr/l

wt.%
wt.%
wt.%
wt.%
wt.%
wt.%

Hydrophilic
Fluffy white powder
300 30
7
50
3.74.7

P99.8
60.050
60.003
60.030
60.025

Slightly hydrophobic
Fluffy white powder
190 20
12
60
4.05.5
0.91.8
P99.8
60.050
60.010
60.030
60.025

Fig. 1. TEM images of nanoparticles used; (left) hydrophilic nanoparticle, (Right) slightly hydrophobic nanoparticles.

Table 2
Sandpack characteristics.

(a) 20
No Nanoparticle

Typical value

Average length
Average diameter
Pore volume, Sw = 1
Irreducible water saturation
Porosity
Absolute permeability

mm
mm
cc

vol%
mD (10

400
19.05
24.3
0.3
21.34
367.96

15

m2)

microscopic ow diversion by colloidal dispersion gels. Surfacecoated silica nanoparticles have been used to stabilize both
water-in-oil and oil-in-water emulsions [17]. CO2-in-water foams
have been created using these same particles by Espinosa et al.
[18], even at high temperatures (up to 95 C). Remarkably, in both
cases, emulsions and foams were created without the aid of surfactants. Qiu [19] investigated nanoparticle and surfactant-stabilized
solvent-based emulsion under laboratory conditions. Using hydrophilic/hydrophobic synthesized nanoparticles, Zhang et al. [20]
made oil in water emulsions and stabilized CO2 foams with quite
high stability. Hamedi Shokrlu and Babadagli [21] could achieve
higher oil recovery through steam stimulation process in the presence of stabilized metal nanoparticles. Roustaei et al. [22] investigated the capability of different polysilicon nanoparticles as
enhanced oil recovery agents with main focus on interfacial tension reduction and wettability alteration mechanisms. Haroun
et al. [23] proposed a procedure including physical processes in
nano-EOR on carbonate core plugs. The main objective of their
work was reducing HSE concerns associated with nanoparticle
transport as well as targeting un-recovered oil. Ogolo et al. [24]
investigated nine different kinds of nanoparticles dispersed in different uids as EOR agents and identied how some particles could
boost hydrocarbon recovery. Viscous carbon dioxide in water
foams were generated by shearing CO2 and an aqueous phase of

AEROSIL 300 (1000 ppm)

IFT (dyne/cm)

Unit

15

10

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

Concentration (ppm)

(b) 20

No Nanoparticle
AEROSIL R816 (1000 ppm)

15

IFT (dyne/cm)

Sandpack property

AEROSIL R816 (2000 ppm)

10

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

Concentration (ppm)
Fig. 2. Oil/water interfacial tensions for aqueous nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solutions of different surfactant concentrations at constant nanoparticle
concentrations. (a) AEROSIL 300, and (b) AEROSIL R816.

partially hydrophobic silica nanoparticles by Worthen et al. [25].

Hendraningrat et al. [26] performed several experimental studies
to investigate oil recovery using hydrophilic silica nanoparticle
injection. Both secondary and tertiary processes were evaluated.

23

Hendraningrat et al. [27] determined the optimum nanoparticle

concentration range for enhanced oil recovery purpose in low permeability sandstone reservoirs.
In spite of extensive utilization of nanotechnology in EOR, so far,
however, there has been little research on application of surfactant/nanoparticle systems as a new chemical agent. As physical
and chemical properties are different in nano scale, it is an essential issue to look into nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solutions
to see if they have desired properties.
This paper is aimed at exploring the capability of hydrophilic
and slightly hydrophobic silica nanoparticles to improve surfactant
performance. Surfactant properties, interfacial tension and adsorption behavior, were studied in the presence of both nanoparticles
to see how these properties are altered. The achieved results
revealed that the interfacial tension, in the presence of both nanoparticles, follows a strange behavior and the adsorption amount
generally decreases depending on the procedure used. Based on
pre-conducted experiments, the optimum conditions were used
in each of the designed ooding procedure to notice any incremental recovery related to nanoparticles according to the new introduced surfactant properties.
2. Experimental work
This section contains the information about the materials used
in this study and the experimental procedure followed to measure
surfactant properties and conduct ooding experiments. It must be
noted that distilled water was used in all experiments and each
experiment was performed three times to eliminate the sources
of uncertainty and check the repeatability of the results.
2.1. Nanoparticles
The nanoparticles used were partially hydrophobic nano silica,
AEROSIL R816 (R816), and a Standard, well-characterized hydrophilic fumed Silica, AEROSIL 300 (A300). Hydrophilic colloidal
particle, A300, is prepared by hydrolysis of silicon tetrachloride
in which silanol group (Si-OH) is generated on silica surface and
AEROSIL R816 is fumed silica after treated with hexadecylsilane
(C16H33) and is commonly used as a rheology control additive in
water based coating systems. Table 1 represents some physicochemical properties of nanoparticles used in this study according
to the manufacturer reports. It must be mentioned that both nanoparticles have amorphous structures and are approximately spherical in shape and their average size is of order of few nanometers as
observed in TEM images represented in Fig. 1. The particles were
supplied by Degussa (Evonik).
2.2. Surfactant
The surfactant used in this study was an anionic surfactant
named Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate (SDS) bought from Merck

Adsorption (mg SDS/gr Rock)

M. Zargartalebi et al. / Fuel 143 (2015) 2127

10

SDS

0.1

SDS + AEROSIL 300

SDS (*)
SDS + AEROSIL 300 (*)
SDS + AEROSIL R816

0.01
100

1000

10000

Surfactant concentration (ppm)

Fig. 4. Surfactant adsorption behavior for solutions of different surfactant/nanoparticle systems. () denotes that the rock surface has been coated by hydrophilic
nanoparticles.

Company. The CMC value of the surfactant was determined to be

approximately 2203 mg/l using conductivity measurement technique. The CMC value was relatively close to those given in literature [28]. Surfactant solutions of different concentrations were
slightly acidic and had a PH of 5 to 6, somewhat higher than that
of nanoparticle solutions.
2.3. Interfacial tension measurements
The interfacial tension between kerosene and aqueous solutions
was determined by axisymmetric drop shape analysis of a captive
drive instrument (pendant drop method) manufactured by Alberta
(Canada). The IFT values were obtained using YoungLaplace equation [29].
2.4. Adsorption measurements
In this study, surfactant adsorption onto prepared sand grains
was measured using batch technique. To do so, surfactant and
nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solutions of different concentrations were put in contact with sand particles with the mass ratio
of 5:1 of solution to sand. The solutions and sand particles were
equilibrated in appropriate vessels in gentle horizontal agitation
for 24 h. This time is more than the time required to reach equilibrium as suggested by [30]. In addition, by performing adsorption
tests for different contact durations, it was evaluated if this duration i.e. 24 h would be enough for adsorption process to reach to
equilibrium conditions. The surfactant solution and sand sediments
were then separated by centrifugation. Finally, the surfactant concentration was determined using appropriate calibration curves
made my surfactant solution conductivity. The reason behind
applying this method to measure surfactant adsorption was that
solution conductivity is independent of nanoparticle concentration.

Fig. 3. SEM images of bare rock (a) and the rock exposed to nanoparticle suspension (b).

24

M. Zargartalebi et al. / Fuel 143 (2015) 2127

Table 3
Surfactant adsorption on hydrophilic nanoparticle coated rock for different surfactant and nanoparticle concentrations.
Coating solution

Adsorbent solution

Adsorption (mg/gr)

Nanoparticle conc. (ppm)

Surfactant conc. (ppm)

Nanoparticle conc. (ppm)

250
500
1000
2000

250
500
1000
2000
250
500
1000
2000

2000
2000
2000
2000
2000
6000
6000
6000
6000
6000
6000
6000
6000
6000

250
500
1000
2000

Water Inj.

Surfactant Inj.

60
40
20

SDS (4000)
SDS (2000)

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

Pore Volume Injected

Fig. 5. Tertiary oil recovery obtained by surfactant solutions of different
concentrations.

2.5. Flooding experiments

Flooding experiments were performed in unconsolidated sandstone sand packs with similar properties of which average values
are listed in Table 2. Water saturated sand pack was rst brought
to connate water conditions in a primary drainage oil ood (Oil
density and viscosity at 25 C were 885.9 kg/m3 and 26 cp, respectively). After establishing the initial conditions, the sand pack was
ready for water ooding as a secondary oil recovery process. Water
was injected with a constant rate of 0.25 cc/min. Water injection
was continued to about one and a half pore volume when the oil
production became negligible. The efuent was collected in 1 cc
tubes with 0.2 cc accuracy to obtain the incremental oil recovery.
Then, a surfactant or nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solution
slug with specied size of 0.2 pore volume was injected with the
same rate and additional recovery was obtained. Finally, another
pore volume of water was injected as a post ush until the oil
cut at the production outlet became nearly 0 percent.
3. Results and discussion
This section covers the experimental results obtained through
interfacial tension and adsorption measurements and tertiary
recovery ooding tests.

(a) 100
Recovery (% OOIP)

80

After measuring surfactant solution-oil interfacial tension,

nanoparticle- augmented surfactant solutions were examined to
determine the differences in interfacial behavior. As it can be seen
in Fig. 2(a), A300 nanoparticles cause a rapid interfacial tension
reduction at low surfactant concentrations however, in higher concentrations, an increase in interfacial tension between nanoparticle- augmented surfactant solution and oil is observed. Similar
observations were made in the case of R816 slightly hydrophobic
nanoparticles (Fig. 2(b)). These controversial behaviors in low
and high surfactant concentrations were repeated when the experiment was conducted with different nanoparticle concentration
(Fig. 2(b)) which indicates that the weird IFT trend is directly
related to the presence of nanoparticles in the solution. Several
mechanisms may be responsible for the observed behavior at low
surfactant concentrations [31]. First is that the repulsive electrostatic forces between the particles and the SDS promotes the

80

Water Inj.
Chemical Inj.

60
40
SDS (2000) + A300 (5000)

20

SDS (2000) + A300 (2000)

SDS (2000)

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

Pore Volume Injected

(b) 100
Recovery (% OOIP)

Recovery (% OOIP)

100

1.83
1.03
0.85
0.76
0.62
1.90
1.39
1.25
1.54
2.58
1.40
1.00
0.81
0.62

80
Water Inj.

Chemical Inj.

60
40

NP Inj.

NP+Surfactant Inj.
A300 (2000) THEN SDS (2000) + A300 (2000)

20

SDS (2000) + A300 (2000)

SDS (2000)

3.1. Experiments on surfactant properties

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

Pore Volume Injected

Prior to ooding experiments effect of A300 and R816 nanoparticles on surfactant properties were studied. The main focus was on
interfacial and adsorption behavior.

Fig. 6. Tertiary oil recovery obtained by AEROSIL 300 nanoparticle-augmented

surfactant solutions; (a) different nanoparticle concentrations, and (b) different
injection scenarios.

25

M. Zargartalebi et al. / Fuel 143 (2015) 2127

Water Inj.
Chemical Inj.

10

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

PV Injected
Water Injection
SDS (2000) Injection
SDS (2000)+ R 816 (10000) Injection

Fig. 8. Differential pressure prole for the injection of surfactant and R816
nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solutions.

Table 4
The additional oil recovery obtained by surfactant-nanoparticle systems and injection
scenarios.
Flooding agent

Additional oil recovery (%

OOIP)

SDS (2000)
SDS (4000)
SDS (2000) + A300 (2000)
A300 (2000) Then SDS (2000) + A300 (2000)
SDS (2000) + A300 (5000)
SDS (2000) + R816 (2000)
SDS (2000) + R816 (10,000)

10.78
11.87
15.86
17.23
17.87
18.26
20.41

the rock surface. It is seen that the adsorption amount is considerably lower for all surfactant concentrations respect to the situation
in which sole surfactant molecules are to be adsorbed on ordinary
rock surface (Fig. 4). The effect of nanoparticle concentration on
adsorption behavior is also investigated. As represented in Table 3,
the greater the nanoparticle concentration, the lower the adsorption amount is.
It is worth mentioning that dynamic surfactant adsorption
which occurs during ooding processes is lower than the measured
static adsorption due to multitudes of reasons like shorter period of
surfactant contact with rock surface, less available surface to surfactant molecules and simultaneous presence of two phases in
pore space.
3.2. Flooding experiments
Flooding experiments were performed to evaluate the potential
of surfactant and nanoparticle-augmented surfactant ooding process as a tertiary recovery method. Based on pre-conducted experiments, different types of solutions were injected.

100

Recovery (% OOIP)

15

Differential pressure (psi)

surfactant diffusion toward the interface [32]. Another approach

implies that particles covered by a large amount of surfactant
can act as carriers of SDS toward the interface. The reduction in
interfacial tension could be due to surfactant release from the particles but could also be due to the effect of surfactant-coated particles on the surface tension [33,34]. At large surfactant
concentrations, the charged nanoparticles attract the surfactants
to aggregate surround the nanoparticles and unevenly distribute
at the wateroil interfaces [35] and an increase in IFT is observed.
Three different scenarios of surfactant adsorption on rock surface in the presence of nanoparticles were studied. Nanoparticle
concentration was 2000 ppm in all cases. First of all, ordinary
non-coated rock was put in contact with nanoparticle- augmented
surfactant solution to see whether the presence of nanoparticles in
the solution makes any difference. As it can be seen for A300
(Fig. 3), the amount of surfactant adsorption has been reduced
for a wide range of surfactant concentrations from low concentrations up to a specic concentration around critical micelle concentration (CMC) after which higher surfactant adsorption respect to
sole surfactant solution is observed. In the case of R816, the
amount of adsorbed surfactant was smaller for all surfactant concentrations as shown in Fig. 3 and in comparison to A300, R816
can lower the adsorption amount more efciently.
In the second scenario, rock was rst put in contact with nanoparticle suspensions for 24 h. The adsorption of nanoparticles on
the rock surface can be obviously seen through the SEM images
of the bare rock and the rock exposed to nanoparticle solution
(Fig. 3). Then, the adsorption of surfactant on the coated rock
was investigated. As it can be seen in Fig. 4, considerable reduction
has occurred in adsorption amount for low surfactant concentrations. However, this effect is gradually diminished as the surfactant
concentration gets higher. The adsorption amount reaches a plateau higher than the case in which ordinary rock i.e. non-coated
rock has been used. Similar adsorption behavior as in previous case
indicates that same mechanisms are responsible for surfactant
adsorption when nanoparticle-augmented surfactant and surfactant solutions are to be adsorbed on non-coated and coated rock
surfaces, respectively. The twofold adsorption behaviors in low
and high surfactant concentrations prompted us to investigate
the effect of nanoparticle concentration on this phenomenon.
According to Table 3, for low surfactant concentrations (i.e.
2000 ppm), the higher the nanoparticle concentration, the lower
the adsorption amount is. Adsorption behavior of highly concentrated surfactant solutions (i.e. 6000 ppm) generally shows an
ascendant trend. However, at low nanoparticle concentrations, a
small decrease in adsorption amount has occurred.
In the last scenario, A300 nanoparticle existed on both rock surface and in surfactant solution. The nanoparticle concentration is
the same in nanoparticle- augmented surfactant solution and on

80

Water Inj.
Chemical Inj.

60
40
SDS (2000) + R816 (10000)

20

SDS (2000) + R816 (2000)

SDS (2000)

0
0

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

Pore Volume Injected

Fig. 7. Tertiary oil recovery obtained by hydrophobic nanoparticle-augmented
surfactant solutions of different concentrations.

3.2.1. Surfactant injection

Here, the purpose is to nd out how and to what amount the
surfactant concentration beyond the CMC can inuence the ultimate tertiary recovery. To do so, two ooding experiments were
run for SDS anionic surfactant concentrations of 2000 and
4000 mg/l which are slightly lower and considerably higher than
the critical micelle concentration, respectively.
As it can be seen in Fig. 5, although the surfactant concentration
was doubled, only about 1.1% additional oil was recovered. This is
due to the fact that after a certain concentration i.e. critical micelle
concentration, the interfacial and adsorption behavior of a surfactant do not alter signicantly and as mentioned before, these

26

M. Zargartalebi et al. / Fuel 143 (2015) 2127

Table 5
Residual oil saturations after water ooding (secondary recovery) and surfactant/nanoparticle augmented surfactant ooding (tertiary recovery).
Flooding agent

Secondary recovery residual oil saturation % Error = 0.8

Tertiary recovery residual oil saturation % Error = 0.8

SDS (2000)
SDS (4000)
SDS (2000) + A300 (2000)
A300 (2000) Then SDS (2000) + A300 (2000)
SDS (2000) + A300 (5000)
SDS (2000) + R816 (2000)
SDS (2000) + R816 (10,000)

0.36
0.36
0.37
0.36
0.37
0.37
0.36

0.28
0.27
0.26
0.23
0.25
0.24
0.21

factors are the dominant ones in surfactant efciency determination. This observation also reveals that 2000 ppm solution provides
sufcient amount of surfactant to retain desirable properties in
porous media and recover additional oil using surfactant injection
scenario.
3.2.2. Nanoparticle-augmented surfactant injection
As it was seen in previous sections, the presence of both hydrophilic and slightly hydrophobic nanoparticles uniquely inuenced
both interfacial and adsorption behavior of anionic surfactant.
Therefore, several ooding experiments were performed to see if
the nanoparticles could enhance the surfactant performance during ow through porous media. Different combinations of surfactant and nanoparticles were used as tertiary recovery agents. The
surfactant concentration was 2000 mg/l in all experiments. The
concentration selection was based on the optimum interfacial tension conditions (the minimum IFT value) for nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solutions. In the following, different scenarios
of nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solution injection will be
discussed.
3.2.2.1. Hydrophilic nanoparticle/surfactant system. The purpose was
to study the effect of A300 hydrophilic nanoparticle presence on
surfactant ooding performance. The effects of nanoparticle concentration and also the ooding procedure were investigated.
First, to see the inuence of nanoparticle concentration, two
ooding experiments were run with solutions of similar surfactant
and different nanoparticle concentrations. The results are presented in Fig. 6(a). It can be seen that nanoparticle presence considerably enhanced the surfactant ooding efciency. Also, higher
concentration of nanoparticles leaded to greater additional oil
recovery. The greater additional and also ultimate recovery of
nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solution respect to the sole
surfactant solution is mainly due to the reduction of surfactant
adsorption in the presence of nanoparticles. Furthermore, the
higher the nanoparticle concentration, the lower the surfactant
adsorption and the greater the incremental oil recovery.
The next ooding experiment followed a different scenario.
First, a specied volume (0.2 pore volume (PV)) of nanoparticle
suspension of 2000 mg/l concentration was injected. The injection
process was succeeded by nanoparticle-augmented surfactant
solution slug before the post ush water. The injection process represents similar conditions with adsorption measurement case in
which nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solution was to be
adsorbed on surface coated rock. The lower adsorption of surfactant resulted in higher additional recovery as shown in Fig. 6(b).
3.2.2.2. Slightly hydrophobic nanoparticle/surfactant system. Slightly
hydrophobic nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solutions of different nanoparticle concentrations were used. As it is shown in
Fig. 7, nanoparticle presence resulted in greater amount of recovered oil. Also, the higher the nanoparticle concentration, the higher
the oil recovery is.

It can be seen that the slightly hydrophobic nanoparticles were

more efcient in recovery enhancement respect to hydrophilic
nanoparticles of the same surfactant and nanoparticle concentrations. Two factors are considered to be responsible for greater efciency of slightly hydrophobic nanoparticles. The rst factor is the
lower adsorption amount of slightly hydrophobic nanoparticleaugmented surfactant solutions respect to hydrophilic ones in similar conditions. The second one which seems to be more important
is that the slightly hydrophobic nanoparticles show polymeric
behavior i.e. they are able to viscosify aqueous solutions to a considerable degree [36]. This behavior is obviously inferred from the
differential pressures along the sand packs during surfactant and
nanoparticle/surfactant injections as shown in Fig. 8. Hydrophobic
interactions between nanoparticles in conjunction with hydrogen
bridges are thought to be responsible in the viscosity enhancement. High viscosity of the slightly hydrophobic nanoparticle-augmented surfactant solutions results in a piston-like ow through
porous medium. Consequently, the sweep efciency is improved
and more oil is recovered. This phenomenon is enhanced by higher
nanoparticle concentrations as a result of higher viscosity. Tables 4
and 5 summarize the results obtained during several experiments.
4. Conclusion
In this study the capability of hydrophilic and slightly hydrophobic silica nanoparticles to improve surfactant performance was
explored. Prior to ooding experiments, the effects of nanoparticle
on surfactant properties were investigated. The results showed that
interfacial tension between nanoparticle-augmented surfactant
solution and oil starts with a rapid decrease in low surfactant concentration and follows an increase at higher concentrations. Surfactant adsorption on rock surface was generally reduced in the
presence of nanoparticle and this reduction was much more considerable for hydrophobic particles in all surfactant concentrations.
Flooding experiments revealed that nanoparticles can efciently enhance surfactant ooding and greater additional oil
recovery can be obtained by the inclusion of nanoparticles into surfactant solutions. The injection scenario also affected the efciency
of similar agents with equal surfactant and nanoparticle concentrations. The improvement in surfactant ooding efciency was more
considerable for slightly hydrophobic nanoparticle-augmented
surfactant solutions respect to hydrophilic ones.
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