الفهرس | Only 14 pages are availabe for public view |
Abstract This study provides a solution to mitigate the gap between Egypt’s daily liquid fuel consumption which stands at 812 thousand barrels, and the daily production, which reached 561 thousand barrels. The solution involves maximizing the oil recovery factors of existing fields during the enhanced oil recovery process. To achieve this, the study evaluated the use of biopolymer flooding as an eco-friendly and stable alternative to synthetic polymers. Also, two biopolymer composites were synthesized by grafting xanthan and chitosan with nanoparticles for this purpose. Results showed that the composite xanthan and chitosan exhibited exceptional salinity, temperature, and pressure tolerance at reservoir conditions. The addition of silica nanoparticles increased viscosity fivefold. Both native and composite solutions demonstrated pseudoplastic behavior. Testing showed a linear correlation between storage and loss moduli versus frequency, indicating elasticity. Core flooding using Bahariya formation core plugs indicate that the additional recovery is duplicated by using the biopolymer composites as a result of improve the displacement efficiency. Field-scale modeling demonstrated that the biopolymer composite achieved superior oil recovery, compared to native biopolymers and water flooding. Consequently, the biopolymer composites outperformed their native counterparts and water flooding in the NPV of the project. |