Flow Driven Oil Recovery Enhanced with Structural Disjoining Pressure

Nanofluids have the potential to enhance oil recovery through the structural disjoining pressure, a pressure developed when nanoparticles concentrate at the three-phase contact line. A model microfluidic porous network is used to measure the percentage of oil displaced from this channel as the volume fraction of a Triton X-100 micelle nanofluid is varied from 0 - 30%. The percentage of oil displaced varies nearly linearly with micellar nanoparticle volume fraction starting with 39% using deionized water and 89% using a volume fraction of 30%. While the trend is clear, significant variability between experiments was observed for a fixed nanofluid volume fraction. This indicates that surface energy heterogeneity is important for the nanofluid oil displacement performance.