Performance of low-salinity water flooding for enhanced oil recovery improved by SiO2 nanoparticles

Low-salinity water injection has been utilized as a promising method for oil recovery in recent years. Low-salinity water flooding changes the ion composition or brine salinity for improving oil recovery. Recently, the application of nanoparticles with low-salinity water flooding has shown remarkable results in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Many studies have been performed on the effect of nanofluids on EOR mechanisms. Their results showed that nanofluids can improve oil recovery when used in low-salinity water flooding. In this work, the effects of injection of low-salinity water and low-salinity nanofluid (prepared by adding SiO2 nanoparticles to low-salinity water) on oil recovery were investigated. At first, the effects of ions were investigated with equal concentrations in low-salinity water flooding. The experimental results showed that the monovalent ions had better performance than the divalent ions because of them having more negative zeta potential and less ionic strength. Also, low-salinity water flooding recovered 6.1% original oil in place (OOIP) more than the high-salinity flooding. Contact angle measurements demonstrated that low-salinity water could reduce the contact angle between oil and water. Then in the second stage, experiments were continued by adding SiO2 nanoparticles to the K+ solution which had the highest oil recovery at the first stage. The experimental results illustrated that the addition of SiO2 nanoparticles up to 0.05 wt% increased oil recovery by about 4% OOIP more than the low-salinity water flooding.