Chemical Enhanced Oil Recovery: Advances in Polymer Flooding and Nanotechnology

This book aims at presenting, describing, and summarizing the latest advances in polymer flooding regarding the chemical synthesis of the EOR agents and the numerical simulation of compositional models in porous media, including a description of the possible applications of nanotechnology acting as a booster of traditional chemical EOR processes.

A large part of the world economy depends nowadays on non-renewable energy sources, most of them of fossil origin. Though the search for and the development of newer, greener, and more sustainable sources have been going on for the last decades, humanity is still fossil-fuel dependent. Primary and secondary oil recovery techniques merely produce up to a half of the Original Oil In Place. Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) processes are aimed at further increasing this value. Among these, chemical EOR techniques (including polymer flooding) present a great potential in low- and medium-viscosity oilfields.

• Describes recent advances in chemical enhanced oil recovery.

• Contains detailed description of polymer flooding and nanotechnology as promising boosting tools for EOR.

• Includes both experimental and theoretical studies.

About the Authors

Patrizio Raffa

is Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen. He focuses on design and synthesis of new polymeric materials optimized for industrial applications such as EOR, coatings and smart materials. He (co)authored about 40 articles in peer reviewed journals.

Pablo Druetta

works as lecturer at the University of Groningen (RUG) and as engineering consultant. He received his Ph.D. from RUG in 2018 and has been teaching at a graduate level for 15 years. His research focus lies on computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

• Describes recent advances in chemical enhanced oil recovery.
• Contains detailed description of polymer flooding and nanotechnology as promising boosting tools for EOR.
• Includes both experimental and theoretical studies.