Iranian Researcher Conducts Research on Adding Nanoparticles for Enhanced Oil Recovery by Optimizing Flooding

Alimorad Rashidi Khoshsohbat, a faculty member of the Research Institute of Petroleum Industry belonging to the Iranian Ministry of Petroleum, carried out a research project to optimize oil extraction and eliminate energy wastage, for which he studied the impact of modified nanoparticles in the middle of the water and hydrocarbon emulsion process to optimize flooding in increasing oil extraction.

“Although the use of alternative energies such as nuclear energies and renewable energies has increased in recent years, its amount is small compared to fossil energies, and it can be said that the role of renewables will be limited to a complementary and supporting role for at least the next two decades,” said Khoshsohbat, who is a postdoctoral student at the University of Tehran. 

“We need to have serious approaches towards an increase in extraction from oil reservoirs, and foreign and domestic policies should be determined in this field.”

“In the meantime, nanotechnology as a new and unique technology has the potential to create significant changes in various fields of oil and gas,” added Rashidi Khoshsohbat.

“Today, a new generation of fluids has attracted the attention of researchers in the oil and gas industry, which is called smart fluids,” he continued.

“The use of smart fluids or nanofluids by affecting intermolecular forces can result in a change in wettability and decrease tensile force and consequently improve the process of increasing extraction from reservoirs. One of the effective applications of nanoparticles is to change the wettability of reservoir rocks,” he highlighted.

“Wettability is defined as the ability of a fluid to spread on the rock surface in the presence of another fluid and plays an important role in oil and gas production,” he said, adding, “With this method, with an acceptable amount of cost in increasing oil extraction, we can also have a growing trend in the industrialization and indigenization of its knowhow.”

“The main purpose of this project was to increase the efficiency of oil extraction from production wells by means of modified nanoparticles and their effect in improving emulsion properties, which fortunately we were able to achieve,” Rashidi Khoshsohbat added.

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