SPE-190132-MS

Low Salinity Hot Water Injection with Addition of Nanoparticles for

Enhancing Heavy Oil Recovery under Reservoir Conditions

Yanan Ding, University of Regina; Sixu Zheng, University of Calgary; Xiaoyan Meng and Daoyong Yang, University
of Regina

Copyright 2018, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Western Regional Meeting held in Garden Grove, California, USA, 22-27 April 2018.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract
In this study, a novel technique of low salinity hot water (LSHW) injection with addition of nanoparticles has
been developed to examine the synergistic effects of thermal energy, low salinity water (LSW) flooding, and
nanoparticles for enhancing heavy oil recovery, while optimizing the operating parameters for such a hybrid
enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method. Experimentally, one-dimensional (1D) displacement experiments
under different temperatures have been performed, while two types of nanoparticles (i.e., SiO2 and Al2O3)
are respectively examined as the additive in the LSW. The performance of LSW injection with and without
nanoparticles at various temperatures is evaluated, allowing optimization of the timing to initiate low
salinity water injection. The corresponding initial oil saturation, production rate, water cut, and ultimate
oil recovery, are continuously monitored and measured under various operating conditions. Compared to
conventional water injection, the low salinity water injection is found to effectively improve heavy oil
recovery as an EOR technique in the presence of nanoparticles. Also, the addition of nanoparticles into the
LSHW can promote synergistic effect of thermal energy, wettability alteration, and reduction of interfacial
tension (IFT), which improves water displacement efficiency and thus enhances oil recovery. It has been
experimentally demonstrated that such LSHW injection with the addition of nanoparticles can be optimized
to greatly improve oil recovery up to 40.2% in heavy oil reservoirs with low energy consumption.

INTRODUCTION
The tremendous heavy oil reserves discovered in western Canada (i.e., Alberta and Saskatchewan) show
their great potential to sustain the growing global energy demand, though most of them are contained in
thin payzones. Physically, heavy oil has high carbon intensity and requires more efforts and energy to
recover than conventional oils, resulting in adverse environmental consequences during exploitation. The
major challenge is to recover heavy oil in an economical and eco-friendly manner from such thin reservoirs
where the primary oil recovery is low and conventional steam-based thermal recovery methods are
generally ineffective or uneconomical (Kovscek, 2012). The development of heavy oil reserves necessitates
implementation of economical and eco-friendly enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques because the oil
remaining in heavy oil reservoirs after primary recovery and secondary recovery can be up to 90% of the
2 SPE-190132-MS

original oil in place (OOIP) (Farouq Ali and Thomas, 2000). The existing EOR techniques, such as steam
flooding, cyclic steam stimulation (CSS), steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), cyclic solvent injection,
and chemical flooding, suffer from technical, environmental or economical constraints, e.g., excessive heat
losses, large water and energy consumptions, high CO2 emissions, or low production rates (Arhuoma et al.,
2009b; Shah et al., 2010; Zhou and Yang, 2017). As for waterflooding in heavy oil reservoirs, hot water
injection is a common scheme by reducing mobility ratio of water and oil, which is essentially a thermal
method while reducing the steam usage. However, hot water flooding in heavy oil reservoir is not definitely
desirable considering the accompanied high energy loss together with its relatively unitary oil recovery
mechanism. Recently, low salinity water (LSW) flooding has been widely applied for both sandstone
reservoirs and carbonate reservoirs with its positive effect on rock wettability alteration (AlQuraishi et
al., 2015; Abdullah et al., 2017). For the LSW flooding, migration of detached fine put a great threat to
the formation permeability, which brings significant risks for heavy oil production since heavy oil needs
more strict requirements on formation permeability than conventional oils (Kwan et al., 1988). Due to
the unique physical and chemical properties of nanoparticles, such as the large value of surface area to
volume ratio, good ability of adsorption and dispersion, nanoparticles are found to be promising agents for
improving oil recovery. Nanoparticles-dispersed solutions have been widely investigated for their multiple
EOR mechanisms by both experiments and field applications; nevertheless, advantages of nanoparticles
tend to be significantly restrained by the extremely viscous heavy oil if no thermal energy is introduced.
This limitation can be attributed to the reduced spreading ability of nanoparticles when viscosity of the base
fluid is very high (Meng and Yang, 2016; 2017; 2018). To find a more economical and ecological way for
heavy oil recovery compared to the traditional methods, it is of practical and fundamental importance to
examine the effect of nanoparticles and low salinity water on heavy oil recovery at different temperatures.
Due to the high viscosity of heavy oil, its recovery processes are usually based on either thermal or
solvent methods or both; meanwhile, numerous attempts have been made to evaluate the performance of
waterflooding, hot waterflooding, LSW flooding or nanoparticles-dispersed solutions for heavy oil recovery.
The traditional waterflooding has been widely implemented for conventional oil reservoirs due to their
effectiveness and easy implementation, while some attempts have been made in heavy oil reservoirs with
the recovery mechanisms of emulsification, pressure maintenance, and gravity drainage (Miller, 2006).
In addition to some successful field applications under certain conditions (Smith, 1992), it is found from
experimental measurements that waterflooding may be viable for heavy oil reservoirs, though hot water
injection is preferred due to its reduction on oil viscosity (Mai and Kantzas, 2009). Alajmi et al. (2009)
found that the flooding scheme of unheated water injection followed by hot water injection yields the best
recovery performance, while Jamaloei and Singh (2016) concluded that hot waterflooding performs better
than its cold version in most medium oil reservoirs.
As for LSW injection in heavy oil reservoirs, less attention has been received compared to its applications
in conventional oil reservoirs, while some positive findings based on both reservoir simulations and
laboratory experiments have been made available. Alzayer and Sohrabi (2013) observed from their
simulation that the ultimate oil recovery can be increased by approximately 5% of original oil in place
(OOIP) for the LSW flooding processes. Sánchez-Rodríguez et al. (2015) numerically found that oil
recovery can be achieved up to 70% of OOIP by flooding 10 times diluted sea water as a secondary recovery
method in heavy oil carbonate reservoirs. Experimentally, Abass and Fahmi (2013) found that more than
25% additional oil can be recovered by using low salinity as an additional mechanism to hot waterflooding
on a sandpack model. By conducting LSW flooding on Berea and Bentheimer sandstone cores, Abdullah et
al. (2017) concluded that LSW flooding played a major role on increasing oil recovery by 15.11% of OOIP
compared to the traditional brine flooding. In addition, hybrid methods by combing LSW and polymer to
improve sweep efficiency are practically implemented for viscous oil reservoirs (Mohammadi and Jerauld,
2012; AlSofi et al., 2016; Borazjani et al., 2016), during which the indentified recovery mechanisms include
SPE-190132-MS 3

increasing oil relative permeability (Al-adasani et al., 2012), alerting rock wettability as more water wet
(AlQuraishi et al., 2015; Abdullah et al., 2017), reducing interfacial tension (IFT) (Sheng, 2014), and
mitigating fine migrations (Kumar et al., 2011), and improving its intrinsic kinetics (Mahani et al., 2015).
In addition to reducing water-cut in a tight gas formation (Luo et al., 2017), nanoparticles have recently
been found with their superior effects on heavy oil recovery under various conditions. Bera and Belhaj
(2016) improved steam quality by enhancing the fluid heat capacity by adding nano-metal oxide. According
to Farooqui et al. (2015), 10% incremental oil recovery was achieved based on steam thermal capacity
enhancement by adding nickel nanoparticles into steam, while nanocatalysts have been implemented to
promote the in-situ upgrading of heavy oil (Hashemi et al., 2014; Yi et al., 2017). Also, Alomair et al. (2014)
concluded that nanoparticles have the ability to prevent asphaltene precipitation in heavy oil formations.
So far, the identified mechanisms for enhancing oil recovery with nanoparticles include IFT reduction,
wettability alteration, mobility-ratio improvement, and in-situ emulsification (El-Diasty and Aly, 2015),
while comprehensive review can be found elsewhere (Bera and Belhaj, 2016).
Fine migration is experimentally found to impose a great impact on formation impairment during LSW
flooding in sandstone reservoirs (Arab and Pourafshary, 2013), while controversial findings are reported in
literature (Sheng, 2014). Although fine migration can be mitigated by adding nanoparticles in LSW flooding
(Belcher et al., 2010), it is still questionable whether such mitigation would occur in heavy oil reservoirs.
Also, formation damage induced by the retention of nanoparticles is a major concern when implementing
nanofluid flooding (Hendraningrat et al., 2012), while surface handling difficulties are associated with
separation of nanoparticles from the produced oil in spite of economic feasibility in field-scale applications.
In particular, no attempts have been made to evaluate the performance of nanoparticles-assisted LSW
flooding in heavy oil reservoirs at high temperatures.
In this study, a series of sandpack flooding experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance
of different flooding schemes of nanoparticles-assisted low salinity hot water (LSHW) injection for heavy
oil recovery. Once a benchmark waterflooding has been accomplished as the reference case, three scenarios
including LSW flooding, 0.05 wt% SiO2 nanoparticle-dispersed LSW flooding, and 0.05 wt% Al2O3
nanoparticle-dispersed LSW flooding, have been conducted under three different temperatures. During
each experiment, the cumulative oil production together with pressure drop is continuously monitored and
measured. Finally, the major factors associated with recovery mechanisms are identified and analyzed.

EXPERIMENTAL
Materials
The heavy oil sample used in this study is collected from a heavy oil reservoir located in Lloydminster area,
Canada, its density and viscosity are measured to be 0.9743 g/cm3 and 61637 cP at atmospheric pressure
and ambient temperature of 22.5°C, respectively. The measured viscosity as a function of temperature is
tabulated in Table 1, while such relationships are plotted in a logarithmic form in Figure 1. In this study,
synthetic brine is prepared according to the measured compositions of reservoir brine (see Table 2) and LSW
is obtained from diluting the synthetic brine to its 1/10 salinity, while the densities of synthetic brine and
LSW are measured to be 1029.5 g/cm3 and 1000.8 g/cm3, respectively. The compositional analysis for the
dead oil sample is tabulated in Table 3. As can be seen, the heavy oil sample contains no light components
of C1-8, the components of C15+ account for as high as 94.69 wt%, while C9-14 accounts for only 5.31 wt%.
The sand used in this study is Ottawa Silica sand, which mainly consists of 52 wt% of 100 mesh
sand and 32 wt% of 140 mesh sand (Zheng et al., 2013; Zheng and Yang, 2013). Two nanoparticles, i.e.,
amorphous silicon dioxide (nano-SiO2) and hydrophilic aluminum oxide (nano-Al2O3) are selected in this
study according to their favourable EOR performance reported elsewhere (Ogolo et al., 2012; Tarek, 2015).
4 SPE-190132-MS

The size of nano-SiO2 ranges from 20 to 30 nm, while the size of nano-Al2O3 is 20 nm. The bulk density of
nano-SiO2 and nano-Al2O3 powder is measured to be 0.072 g/cm3 and 0.295 g/cm3, respectively.

Table 1—Viscosity of heavy oil under different temperatures

Temperature (°C) Viscosity (cP)

22.5 61637.0
25.3 48372.0
30.3 22487.0
35.0 12230.0
40.0 7717.0
45.0 4669.0
50.0 3087.0
55.0 2077.0
60.0 1456.0
65.0 1053.0
70.0 781.4.0
75.0 511.2.0
80.0 398.0
85.0 310.6

Table 2—Compositional analysis results of reservoir brine

Component Mass (mg/L)

HCO3 −
573
CO3 2-
<1
Cl − 19800
OH − <1
Ca 2+ 385
Na+ 11800
Mg2+ 210
SO42- 130
SPE-190132-MS 5

Figure 1—Measured viscosities of heavy oil sample as a function of temperature.

Table 3—Compositional analysis results of the heavy oil sample

Component wt% Component wt% Component wt%

C1 0 C18 2.315 C40 1.301

C2 0 C19 2.148 C41 1.220
C3 0 C20 2.199 C42 1.190
i-C4 0 C21 2.083 C43 1.122
n-C4 0 C22 1.968 C44 1.389
i-C5 0 C23 1.839 C45 1.389
n-C5 0 C24 1.652 C46 1.370
Other C5 0 C25 1.857 C47 1.449
i-C6 0 C26 1.800 C48 1.181
n-C6 0 C27 1.689 C49 1.111
Other C6 0 C28 1.833 C50 1.100
C7 0 C29 1.663 C51 0.889
C8 0 C30 1.625 C52 0.990
C9 0.011 C31 1.562 C53 0.737
C10 1.132 C32 1.382 C54 0.922
C11 1.040 C33 1.329 C55 0.972
C12 1.039 C34 1.338 C56 0.931
C13 0.756 C35 1.262 C57 0.881
C14 1.335 C36 1.389 C58 0.750
C15 1.958 C37 1.278 C59 0.722
C16 2.118 C38 1.131 C60 0.862
C17 2.139 C39 1.352 C61+ 29.299
Total 100.000
6 SPE-190132-MS

Experimental Setup
As shown in Figure 2, the entire experimental setup consists of five subsystems: fluid injection subsystem,
displacement subsystem, production subsystem, temperature control subsystem, and pressure measurement
subsystem. More specifically, the fluid injection subsystem is composed of a syringe pump (500 HP, ISCO
Inc., USA) and two transfer cylinders (1000 ml, 5000 psi). The prepared brine, LSW or nanoparticles-
dispersed solution are firstly stored in one transfer cylinder, which is subsequently injected into the sandpack
model under a constant rate by using the high-pressure syringe pump. Similarly, heavy oil sample is placed
in the other transfer cylinder, which can be injected into the sandpack model contained inside a customized
coreholder (length: 138 mm and diameter: 43 mm) for achieving desirable oil saturation by using the
aforementioned syringe pump. The detailed description on the coreholder together with its components
can be found elsewhere (Arhuoma et al., 2009a; b). In the displacement subsystem, the sand is filled and
compacted in the coreholder, where the saturated heavy oil is displaced by different injected fluids, i.e.,
brine, LSW, and nanoparticles-dispersed solutions, for different scenarios. In the production subsystem, a
back pressure regulator (BPR) is installed for each flooding process to maintain a prespecified production
pressure. The reference pressure of BPR is provided by another high pressure syringe pump (500 HP, ISCO
Inc., USA). The produced oil and water is collected by using several metering tubes (centrifuge tubes) with
a maximum volume of 15.0 ml and minimum scale of 0.1 ml. Cumulative production of oil and water
is gauged by using such metering tubes. The temperature control subsystem is a large thermostat (OMH
750, Thermo Scientific Heratherm) with a temperature deviation of ±0.4 °C, which can be set to achieve
relatively and even high temperatures with respect to ambient temperature for different scenarios (i.e., 45°C
and 70°C). Experimental components including the sandpack model, transfer cylinders, BPR and metering
tubes are all placed in the thermostat. Finally, the pressure measurement subsystem consists of a pressure
transducer (PM Series, 5000 psi; Heise, USA) and a desktop computer, the pressure data at both inlet and
outlet of the sandpack model are monitored and measured with the pressure transducer with a full-scale
accuracy of 0.025%, while the pressure data are automatically acquired and stored by a data acquisition
system.

Experimental Procedure
Preparation of nanoparticle dispersed solution. Nanoparticles dispersed solutions are prepared by the
following procedures: The LSW is first prepared by dissolving the known salts in deionized water. Then,
the weighted nanoparticles are dispersed in the prepared LSW through 8-10 hours mechanical stirring by
using a magnetic stirrer. To ensure a better dispersion effect, a sonicator (LS-02D, Limplus) is then used to
perform ultrasonic vibration for 30 minutes. In this study, 0.05 wt% nano-SiO2 dispersed LSW and 0.05 wt
% nano-Al2O3 dispersed LSW are respectively prepared.
SPE-190132-MS 7

Figure 2—(a) A schematic diagram and (b) A digital image of the experimental setup.

IFT measurement. In this study, the axisymmetric drop shape analysis (ADSA) for the sessile drop case
is used to measure IFTs of the LSW and nanoparticles-dispersed solutions with the heavy oil at room
conditions. Figure 3 shows a schematic of the ADSA system for the sessile drop used in this study. The
system mainly consists of four parts. The light source and glass diffuser are used to provide a uniform
illumination for the sessile oil drop. As the major component of the system, a see-through-windowed high-
pressure cell (IFT-10, Temco) is used to contain the LSW or nanoparticles-dispersed solution. A microscope
8 SPE-190132-MS

camera (MZ6, Leica, Germany) is employed to capture the digital images of the sessile heavy oil drop
in the LSW or nanoparticles-dispersed solution. All digital images of the sessile drops are acquired and
stored in a desktop computer and subsequently digitized and computed. The light source, high-pressure
cell, and camera are placed on a vibration-free table (RS4000, Newport) for accurate measurements. The
prepared LSW or nanoparticles-dispersed solution is contained in a transfer cylinder which is controlled by
a syringe pump, while the heavy oil is contained in another transfer cylinder, which can be displaced out
of the cylinder by using the syringe pump. In order to perform calculation, the densities of heavy oil and
LSW (or nano-fluid) are required as the inputs. Each measurement is repeated at least three times to ensure
repeatability of the measurements. The accuracy of the measured IFT is ±0.05 (Yang et al., 2005).

Figure 3—Schematic of the experimental setup for measuring the

IFTs of LSW or nanoparticles-dispersed solution with heavy oil.

Sandpack model preparation. For each scenario, the sandpack model is firstly made by filling sand into
an empty coreholder. Then, the filled cylinder is vibrated for about 1.5 hours with a pneumatic vibrator (NP
35, Northern Vibrator, USA). To ensure better and consistent sand compaction, the sand is subsequently
punched with a hammer on the axial direction. Once the sand has been well packed, the end of the coreholder
is then sealed with plate distributors with O-rings on its two sides and the cylinder caps. Another set of plate
distributors are placed at the other end of the coreholder prior to packing the sand.
Prior to each experiment, leakage test needs to perform to ensure that the sandpacked model is well sealed
for consistent and reliable measurements. Air is firstly pumped into the sandpack to reach a certain pressure
(about 500 kPa) as indicated on the pressure gauges installed on either the inlet or outlet of the sandpack
model. Then, all the valves are closed to ensure that pressure change is within 1-2 kPa for 30 minutes for
a successful leakage test.
Porosity measurement. After the leakage test is completed, porosity needs to be measured with the
following procedure for each flooding experiment. Firstly, sandpack is evacuated completely by utilizing
a vacuum pump, which usually takes about 30 minutes. Then, the synthetic brine is imbibed into the
sandpack driven by the inner vacuum pressure, which usually takes at least 15 minutes. The porosity can
thus be calculated as the ratio of the brine sucked into the sandpack (pore volume) to the bulk volume of
the sandpack. It should be noticed that the brine contained in the tube, valves or other places outside the
SPE-190132-MS 9

sandpack is considered and the dead volume and should be excluded for the porosity calculation as such
dead volumes cannot be ignored compared to the pore volume of the sandpacked model.
Permeability measurement. Synthetic brine is used to measure the absolute permeability of the sandpack
model when flowing through the sandpack model. The pressure drop is determined by the pressure
difference between the inlet and outlet of the sandpack model. More specifically, the inlet pressure, as a
driven force, is supplied by a series of water columns with prespecified heights, while the outlet pressure
is the atmospheric pressure. Flow rates at the outlet of the sanpack model are measured by the amount of
brine collected in a fixed time interval. Combing different pressure drops controlled by the height of the
water column with the corresponding measured flow rates, the absolute permeability of the sandpack model
is finally calculated according to the Darcy's law.
Oil saturation. The sandpack saturated with synthetic brine is flooded by the heavy oil sample at a constant
flow rate of 0.1 cc/min until the irreducible water saturation is reached. After the saturation is completed,
the initial oil saturation is then determined by the ratio of the volume of water displaced out of the sandpack
model, or the volume of the oil injected, to the pore volume of the sandpack model. The measured porosity,
absolute permeability, and initial oil saturation of the sandpack model for all scenarios are listed in Table 4.

Table 4—Measured porosity, permeability, initial oil saturation, injected fluid, and operating temperature of Scenarios #1-10

Initial oil Operating

Scenario Porosity (%) Permeability (D) Injected fluid
saturation (%) temperature (°C)

#1 35.4 2.722 94.1 Brine 17

LSW + 0.05 wt% nano-
#2 37.4 3.262 93.4 17
SiO2 dispersed LSW
0.05 wt% nano-
#3 38.1 3.945 93.5 17
SiO2 dispersed LSW
0.05 wt% nano-
#4 36.4 3.815 93.9 17
Al2O3 dispersed LSW
#5 35.4 3.228 95.1 LSW 45
0.05 wt% nano-
#6 37.2 3.698 96.0 45
SiO2 dispersed LSW
0.05 wt% nano-
#7 37.7 3.757 93.4 45
Al2O3 dispersed LSW
#8 36.4 3.991 95.8 LSW 70
0.05 wt% nano-
#9 38.6 4.049 93.7 70
SiO2 dispersed LSW
0.05 wt% nano-
#10 37.7 3.931 94.1 70
Al2O3 dispersed LSW

Flooding schemes. A constant rate of 0.15 cc/min is adopted for all scenarios, which is in accordance with
the typical average pore velocity of 1.0 ft/day in oilfields (Hadia et al., 2008). The cumulative production
of oil and water as well as the pressure drop on the sandpack model are continuously monitored and
measured. For the measurement accuracy of the produced oil and water, 1 hour of centrifuge separation
under 2000 rotations per minute (RPM) is needed. The production pressure is set to be 2000 kPa by
BPR, which is consistent to the well bottomhole pressures for heavy oil reservoirs with lower reservoir
pressures discovered in Canada (Metwally, 1996; Hutchence and Huang, 1999). The total injection volume
is controlled around 2 PV, when the water-cut can achieve around or higher than 95% in most scenarios. For
accurately and efficiently gauging the dynamic production of oil and water, the metering tubes are replaced
by every 30 minutes during the beginning 1.5-2.0 hours of production, and then followed by every 1.0 hour.
10 SPE-190132-MS

In total, there are ten displacement scenarios in this study. The physical properties of the injected fluids and
operating conditions are also summarized in Table 4 as well.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

IFT measurements
In order to examine the mechanisms of nanoparticles-assisted flooding for heavy oil recovery, the IFTs for
fluid systems of heavy oil/LSW, heavy oil/LSW with 0.05 wt% nano-SO2, and heavy oil/LSW with 0.05
wt% nano-Al2O3 are determined under ambient temperature by using an ADSA system for sessile drop
analysis (Yang et al., 2005). The measured equilibrium IFTs are tabulated in Table 5, from which it is found
that nano-Al2O3 and nano-Al2O3 can significantly reduce the IFT by 32.3% and 46.0%, respectively. Such
significant IFT reduction can be considered as a major EOR mechanism.

Table 5—Measured IFT under different conditions

System IFT (dyne/cm)

heavy oil/LSW 29.16

Heavy oil/LSW + 0.05 wt% nano-SiO2 19.74
Heavy oil/LSW + 0.05 wt% nano-Al2O3 15.75

Displacement Scenarios at 17°C (Scenarios #1-4)

Scenarios #1-4 are designed to evaluate the performance of different types of fluid flooding at ambient
temperature of 17°C. The measured heavy oil recovery versus the injected PV of water for Scenarios
#1-4 has been plotted in Figure 4. Brine flooding is implemented as Scenario #1, which aims to be taken
as a benchmark to examine and compare the performance of other scenarios. As shown in Figure 4, oil
production at the beginning of 0.80 PV keeps increasing to a value of 8.40 ml and then turns to a plateau until
the total injection of about 1.50 PV with an ultimate value of 8.70 ml. This low ultimate oil recovery is mainly
ascribed to the unfavourable mobility ratio due to the extremely high viscosity of heavy oil under ambient
temperature, which leads to brine fingering towards the outlet with a low sweep efficiency (Smith, 1992;
Miller, 2006; Mai and Kantzas, 2009). Besides, the cumulative water production of Scenario #1 increases
with a generally constant rate, while no water is produced prior to 0.05 PV of injection, which shows a quite
early water breakthrough. For Scenario #2, LSW flooding is firstly performed for 1.62 PV of injection, and
then 0.93 PV of 0.05 wt% nano-SiO2 assisted LSW flooding is subsequently implemented. 10.35 ml oil is
produced for the first 1.62 PV of injection with a similar water breakthrough time to that of Scenario #1,
while ultimate oil production reaches to 11.28 ml with the addition of nano-SiO2-dispersed solution at the
end of the total injection of 2.55 PV. This 0.93 ml of the increased oil indicates an expected synergistic
effect of nano-SiO2 and LSW on oil recovery. As for the nano-SiO2 assisted LSW flooding implemented in
Scenario #3, undesirable performance is presented by its ultimate oil production of only 9.20 ml, which is
probably due to the settling of nanoparticles and the caused blockage in the sandpack model. In Scenario
#4, a significant increase of produced oil up to 13.90 ml is achieved by using the nano-Al2O3 assisted LSW,
although its water breakthrough time is found to be early and similar with those of Scenarios #1-3. Such a
high ultimate oil recovery indicates its superiority for this cold version of heavy oil production.

Displacement Scenarios at 45°C (Scenarios #5-7)

A slightly higher temperature of 45°C is selected for Scenarios #5-7 to evaluate the performance of heavy
oil production under a moderate temperature condition. The measured oil recovery and produced water
can be seen in Figure 5. LSW flooding is conducted as Scenario #5, as shown in Figure 5, an ultimate oil
production of 17.65 ml is obtained after 1.84 PV LSW injection, while no water is produced during the
SPE-190132-MS 11

initial 0.80 PV of injection. During the flooding process, oil production increases sharply at the beginning
and then its increase rate turns to be slower and slower, while an opposite trend can be observed for water
production. As for the nano-SiO2 assisted LSW flooding in Scenario #6, the synergistic effect of nano-SiO2
and LSW can be observed by its cumulative oil production of 20.45 ml which is 2.8 ml larger than that of
Scenario #5. Also, a minor difference is found on the water breakthrough time between Scenario #5 and
Scenario #6. In particular, the cumulative oil productions for Scenario #5 and Scenario #6 are almost the
same until the higher oil production of Scenario #6 started at 0.75 PV of injection, while a similar trend can
be found for their water production. As for the nano-Al2O3 assisted LSW flooding (i.e., Scenario #7), it is
found that its cumulative oil production is measured to be 18.22 ml, which is slightly lower than those of
Scenario #5 and Scenario #6. However, Scenario #7 yields the best flooding performance among the three
scenarios during the early 0.75 PV of injection. The unfavourable recovery performance of Scenario #7
may be ascribed to the fact that more nano-Al2O3 particles are settled to cause the retention in the sandpack
model in the later period (Li et al., 2015).

Figure 4—Oil recovery and water production versus pore volume of injection at 17°C (Scenarios #1-4).

Displacement Scenarios at 70°C (Scenarios #8-10)

In order to well simulate the hot water injection in heavy oil reservoir, a higher temperature of 70°C is
chosen for evaluating the performance of LSHW flooding (i.e., Scenario #8), nano-SiO2 assisted LSHW
flooding (i.e., Scenario #9), and nano-Al2O3 assisted LSHW flooding (i.e., Scenario #10), respectively.
As can be seen from the measured production profiles in Figure 6, the ultimate oil production of LSHW
flooding (Scenario #8) achieves to be 26.03 ml, which is larger than that of 26.15 ml by nano-SiO2 assisted
scheme (Scenario #9) but smaller than that of 28.75 ml in nano-Al2O3 assisted scheme (Scenario #10). At
this temperature, the potential reason for the slightly low cumulative oil production of Scenario #9 can be
explained by the deposition of nanoparticles, which is similar to the conditions of Scenario #3 and Scenario
#7. For Scenario #10, the oil production is achieved
12 SPE-190132-MS

Figure 5—Measured oil recovery and water production versus pore volume of the injected water for Scenarios #5-7.

Figure 6—Measured oil recovery and water production versus pore volume of injected water for Scenarios #8-10.
SPE-190132-MS 13

up to 28.75 ml after the total injection of 2.25 PV, which is a slightly larger compared to the injection
volumes of other scenarios, while a higher cumulative oil production can still be observed by Scenario
#10 under the same injection conditions with respect to other scenarios. In addition, water breakthrough
times of both Scenario #9 and Scenario #10 are found to be delayed from the approximate value of 0.07
PV of injection in Scenario #8 to the values around 0.15 PV of injection in Scenario #9 and Scenario
#10. This demonstrates certain positive effects of nanoparticles on the mitigation of the water fingering
during the displacing processes. Such delay of the water breakthrough together with the highest cumulative
oil production from Scenario #10 proves that there exists a desired synergistic effect of the addition of
nanoparticles in LSHW flooding for heavy oil production.
Among all the types of the injected fluids, LSW is found to have a better performance than the formation
brine under ambient temperature, i.e., 1.8% additional cumulative oil production is achieved in Scenario
#1 compared to that of Scenario #2, while for all temperatures, nanoparticles assisted LSW flooding
can contribute to higher cumulative oil productions than pure LSW flooding. More specifically, 1.3% oil
increment is obtained with nano-SiO2 after LSW flooding in Scenario #2. Compared to the LSW flooding
at temperature of 45°C in Scenario #5, the cumulative oil production is improved by 2.4% with the addition
of nano-SiO2 in Scenario #6 at the same temperature. Similarly, 3.2% of oil increment is obtained by the
supplement of nano-Al2O3 in Scenario #10 compared to Scenario #8 at temperature of 70°C.

Effect of Temperatures on LSW Flooding (Scenarios #2, 5, and 8)

In this study, temperature is found to significantly affect heavy oil recovery for each type of LSW flooding.
Experimental results for LSW flooding at 17°C, 45°C, and 70°C are compared in Figure 7. As can be seen,
a higher ultimate oil recovery can be achieved when temperature is increased. The ultimate oil recovery
is increased from around 14.7% (the tertiary slug is not considered here) in Scenario #2 to the counterpart
of 26.0% in Scenario #5 when the temperature is increased from 17°C to 45°C, and then the ultimate oil
recovery further increases to 37.0% by increasing temperature to 70°C. Accordingly, it is also found that
more water injection for reaching the ultimate oil recovery is required when the temperature becomes higher.
For Scenario #2, little incremental oil can be produced after 1.62 PV of injection, while, in Scenario #5 and
Scenario #8, the produced oil slowly increases until 1.70 PV and 2.00 PV of LSW are injected, respectively.
Besides, water breakthrough time is found to be not considerably delayed since it is delayed from about 0.05
PV of injection in Scenario #2 to only 0.08 PV and 0.07 PV in Scenario #5 and Scenario #8, respectively.
It can also be found that both the growth rate of water cut and the ultimate water cut are restrained to a
certain degree by the increased temperatures.

Effect of Temperature on Nano-SiO2 Assisted LSW Flooding (Scenarios #3, 6, and 9)

Temperature also plays an important role on the flooding performance of nano-SiO2 assisted LSW flooding.
As can be seen in Figure 8, the ultimate oil recovery at low temperature of 17°C is only 12.8%, which is even
lower than those in the other two scenarios at the same temperature. However, the ultimate oil recovery is
respectively increased to 28.4% and 35.8% when the temperature is increased to 45°C and 70°C. In addition,
a slightly upward trend can be observed for Scenario #6 and Scenario #9 at the end of flooding, while
negligible oil recovery is produced after 1.60 PV of injection in Scenario #3. Similar to the LSW flooding,
the effect of temperature on water breakthrough time is found to be insignificant as the water injection
needed for such breakthrough is only increased from about 0.05 PV to 0.08 PV and 0.15 PV respectively
when temperature is increased from 17°C to 45°C and 70°C. This means that most of the oil increment by
increasing temperature is achieved after water breakthrough occurs. Also, the increased temperatures are
found to be capable of effectively inhibiting the sharply increased water cut in early time and then reducing
their values in a later period.
14 SPE-190132-MS

Figure 7—Maximum oil recovery and water-cut as function of temperature Scenarios #1, #2, #5 and #8.

Figure 8—Maximum oil recovery and water-cut as a function of temperature for Scenarios #3, #6 and #9.
SPE-190132-MS 15

Effect of Temperature on Nano-Al2O3 Assisted LSW Flooding (Scenarios #4, 7, and 10)
Figure 9 depicts the measured oil recovery and water production of Scenario #4, Scenario #7 and Scenario
#10, respectively. As can be seen from Figure 9, the effect of temperature on the flooding performance of
these scenarios is quite consistent with what has been discussed for the scenarios of nano-SiO2 assisted
LSW flooding. For an increased temperature, such effects include the considerably improved ultimate oil
recovery and the extended production period as well as the certain delay of water breakthrough time. More
specifically, the ultimate heavy oil recovery is respectively increased from 20.1% to 25.7% and 40.2% by
increasing temperature from 17°C to 45°C and 70°C. A gradually uplift trend of oil recovery can still be
observed for Scenarios #7 (45°C) and #10 (70°C) on their terminations of injection, while the oil recovery
has already reached its plateau prior to 1.50 PV of injection at 17°C. In addition, water breakthrough occurs
from the injected volume of 0.03 PV to 0.05 PV and 0.15 PV when temperature is shifted from 17°C to
45°C and 70°C. Similarly, the effect of temperature is observed to be consistent with those demonstrated
from both Figure 7 and Figure 8.

Figure 9—Maximum oil recovery and water-cut as a function of temperature for Scenarios #4, #7 and #10.

CONCLUSIONS
In this study, 10 experiment scenarios have been designed and conducted to evaluate the performance of
brine flooding, LSW waterflooding, nano-SiO2 assisted LSW flooding, and nano-AlO2O3 assisted LSW
flooding under different temperatures. Compared to brine flooding, superior performance of oil recovery is
observed in LSW flooding under ambient temperatures, while both LSW dispersed with 0.05 wt% nano-
SiO2 and LSW dispersed with 0.05 wt% nano-SiO2 have shown better performance than either pure brine
or LSW, i.e., the best performance is achieved by nano-Al2O3 assisted LSW flooding with its ultimate oil
recovery of 20.1% at 17°C, while nano-SiO2 assisted LSW flooding yields a larger ultimate oil recovery of
28.4% at 45°C. In particular, the highest ultimate oil recovery up to 40.2% has been achieved at 70°C for
LSW dispersed with 0.05 wt% nano-Al2O3 (i.e., Scenario #10). All of these indicate a favourable synergistic
16 SPE-190132-MS

effect of nanoparticles in LSW flooding. In addition, temperature is found to impose a significant impact
on the performance of heavy oil production with a considerable increased ultimate oil recovery, extended
production period, and certain delay of water breakthrough time. The delay of water breakthrough can also
be enhanced with the assistance of nanoparticles though much milder, while the increased temperatures
are found to be capable of effectively inhibiting the sharply increased water cut in early time and then
reducing their values in a later period. In general, 0.05 wt% nano-Al2O3 assisted LSW flooding at 70°C can
be considered as the optimum flooding scheme among all the scenarios with its ultimate oil recovery of
40.2%. This flooding scheme positively indicates the feasibility for nanoparticles assisted LSHW flooding
in heavy oil reservoirs. However, a higher oil recovery can be possibly further obtained if the settling of
nanoparticles and the induced blockage can be resolved.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge a Discovery Development Grant, a Discovery Grant, and a Collaborative Research
and Development (CRD) Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
(NSERC) to D. Yang. The authors highly appreciate Dr. Y. Gu for using the ADSA apparatus.

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