Effects of Flowrate and Wettability on Ultimate Oil Recovery during Nanofluid Injection into Glass Micromodel

Most of the oil reservoirs are reaching the decline period of their life. Many researchers have observed nanoparticles increase the recovery factor by IFT reduction between the water-based injected fluid and the residual oil, changing the wettability of porous media and increasing the viscosity of the injection fluid.In this experiment, glass micromodel was used instead of a core as porous media due to its displacement mechanisms visibility. First, micromodel was saturated with 19゚ API, and then, water-based silica nanofluid with a concentration of 100 mg/l was injected at different rates of 0.03 and 0.05 cc/h into water-wet and mixed-wet micromodels.Results show that maximum ultimate recovery is obtained at water-wet condition and flowrate of 0.03 cc/h.As a conclusion, the higher rate has higher shear stress that has a bad influence on nanoparticles stability and water-wet micromodel helps much better to recover the residual oil