Silica nanofluid flooding for enhanced oil recovery in sandstone rocks

The recovery factor improved with increasing the silica nanofluid concentration until optimum concentration was reached. The maximum oil recovery was achieved at optimum silica nanoparticles concentration of 0.1 wt%. The ultimate recovery of initial oil in place increased by 13.28% when using tertiary flooding of silica nanofluid compared to the recovery achieved by water flooding alone. Based on our experimental study, permeability impairment was investigated by studying the silica nanoparticles concentration, and the silica nanofluid injection rate. The permeability was measured before and after nanofluid injection. This helped us to understand the behavior of the silica nanoparticles in porous media. Results showed that silica nanofluid flooding is a potential tertiary enhanced oil recovery method after water flooding has ceased.