ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Chem.
Sec. Polymer Chemistry
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fchem.2025.1605416
This article is part of the Research TopicGreen Chemistry in Geo-energy Development: Fundamental and ApplicationsView all articles
Study on multi-scale oil displacement mechanism polymer/nanoparticle composite flooding
Provisionally accepted
Bei Wei1,2Ningyu Zheng1,2Yu Xue1,2
Jian Hou1,2*Yongsheng Liu1,2Zhixin Guo1,2Xuwen Qin1,2
Qingjun Du1,2- 1Key Laboratory of Deep Oil and Gas, China University of Petroleum (Huadong), Qingdao, Shandong Province, China
- 2School of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao, China
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Polymer flooding is a popular enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique; however, conventional polymers face challenges such as large dosages and limited shear resistance. To address these issues, we proposed a polymer/nanoparticle composite flooding method and investigated its feasibility through laboratory experiments. We first characterized the rheological properties and interfacial tension of various polymer/nano-SiO2 composite systems and examined their microscopic morphology using scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Subsequently, we conducted twodimensional microscopic flooding experiments to evaluate sweep efficiency and analyze residual oil distribution patterns. Finally, we performed core flooding experiments to compare injection pressure and recovery efficiency among different flooding systems. Results indicate that the presence of nano-SiO2 effectively enhanced the viscosity of the polymer system. The viscosity-increasing mechanism is nanoparticles adsorbing onto polymer molecular chains to form network structures. The polymer/nano-SiO2 composite system significantly increased sweep efficiency and promoted the transformation of residual oil from reticulated patterns to cluster, membrane, and punctiform patterns. Compared to polymer flooding, the polymer/nano-SiO2 composite system required a smaller amount of usage, effectively avoids environmental pollution, and showed better injectivity, achieving a 6% higher recovery while reducing injection pressure by up to 14%.
Keywords: Polymer flooding, nano-SiO2, Enhanced Oil Recovery, Microscopic flooding experiments, Core displacement experiment
Received: 03 Apr 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wei, Zheng, Xue, Hou, Liu, Guo, Qin and Du. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jian Hou, Key Laboratory of Deep Oil and Gas, China University of Petroleum (Huadong), Qingdao, Shandong Province, China
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