Nanoparticles Stabilized Carbon Dioxide Foams in Sandstone and Limestone Reservoir

The use of nanoparticles with carbon dioxide foams has been proposed for enhanced oil recovery due to their robust chemical stability in harsh environment. The experimental study was performed by using nanoparticles stabilized carbon dioxide foams to study their recovery of residual oil by varying the carbon dioxide flow rates on different core samples such as sandstone and limestone. Experimental setup was divided into two different kinds of experiments which are the injection of carbon dioxide foams and the injection of nanoparticles assisted carbon dioxide foams in both sandstone and limestone core samples. For the CO2 foam injection, it was found that limestone has higher oil recovery than sandstone rock samples with 38.67% recovery and 36.36% recovery for sandstone. With the nanoparticles assisted injection, the crude oil recovery increased to 41.82% and 45.33% for sandstone and limestone respectively. Limestone showed the higher porosity reduction at the end of experiment compared to sandstone with the porosity of 7.56% on limestone and 12.49% on sandstone respectively. This is due to the nanoparticles strongly absorbed at the limestone surfaces containing calcite component.