Current hydrocarbon recovery methods in hydraulically fractured shale have low recovery efficiency of about 10%. The objective of this work is to investigate several enhanced recovery methods to improve the production rates in shale. We examine the effectiveness of nitrogen and supercritical carbon dioxide in huff-and-puff methods for enhanced oil recovery to re-energize the reservoirs and...
Pore-scale surface roughness occurs in varying degrees and forms within geologic media due to authigenic cement coatings and clay minerals. Such roughness increases the surface area contacted by fluids and chemical additives during subsurface operations such as enhanced oil recovery, storage of hazardous waste, carbon storage and sequestration, and non-aqueous phase liquid (NAPL) remediation...
Micromodels are a proven platform for offering new insights into the area of foam enhanced oil recovery (EOR). These tools provide us with not only analytical information for the characterization of particular oil-surfactant systems but also allow us to gain fundamental insight into the mechanisms that drive the oil displacement process. In addition, the polymer-based micromodels we use offer...
Food-grade surfactants Lecithin (from soy) and Tween 80 (used in food such as ice-cream) were employed for the mobilization of non-aqueous-phase liquids from porous media. The hypothesis of this work was that food grade surfactants can be employed for oil-spill remediation and that there may be a synergistic benefit when two surfactants are combined. The non-aqueous phase of this project was...
