Crude oil-water interface partitioning of polyvinylpyrrolidone-coated silica nanoparticles in low-salinity brine

Abstract

Nanoparticles are of interest in recent oil production process due to their potential to wettability alteration, but not interfacially active at the crude oil-water interface. Stability loss in brine environment, where nanoparticles tend to aggregate, is another issue for field implementation. Hence, recent challenge is to functionalize nanoparticles that are interfacially active and still stabilized in brine. The current study fabricated and characterized the polyvinylpyrrolidone-coated silica composite nanoparticles for their interfacial activity at the crude oil-water interface. Reduction in oil-water interfacial tension was observed and more dramatic with increasing particle concentration, confirming particle adsorption performance. In low-salinity brine (2000 ppm NaCl), the composite particles remained stabilized with weakened electrostatic force between particle and crude oil surfaces, while their size was smaller due to polymer shell dehydration. These led to faster diffusion rate than in Milli-Q water, which affected the rate of change in oil-water/brine interfacial tension, with the early-stage adsorption being a diffusion-controlled in both fluids. At equivalent particle concentration, the oil-water interfacial tensions in brine were lower than those of Milli-Q water (by ∼2 mN/m), with interfacial coverage of the particles at the interface was found to be higher in the brine. Such difference is attributed to a weaker repulsive force between particle and the interface, induced by surface charge screening that is only present in brine. The study has demonstrated the potential use of polymer-coated nanoparticles as suitable additives for use in oil recovery, which can be used concurrently with low-salinity brine as a combined fluid. While both chemicals are known to construct disjoining pressure for wettability alteration, advantage of using interfacially active nanoparticles is additional mechanism to enhance oil recovery, i.e. reducing the oil-water interfacial tension, which unfunctionalized particles could not contribute.