Nanoparticles as flow improver of petroleum crudes: Study on temperature-dependent steady-state and dynamic rheological behavior of crude oils

Nanoparticles as flow improver of petroleum crudes: Study on temperature-dependent steady-state and dynamic rheological behavior of crude oils

Rheology

Crude oil

Viscosity

Petroleum industry

Heavy oil production

Petroleum transportation

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons

Silica

Silica nanoparticles

Nanoparticles

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

Alumina

Aluminum oxide

Spectroscopic analysis

With the present energy scenario, the oil companies are persuading to exploit crude oil resources with high viscosity and an extreme chemical composition which makes production and transportation complex. The rheology of crude oil is related to the chemical components present in them where the molecular structure of polar polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) plays an important role. The emergence of nanotechnology in this aspect may provide a better solution for production optimization from the subsurface reservoir as well as flow assurance in surface transportation. The present study investigates the rheological behavior of two crude oils that are chemically different at the molecular level which is demonstrated by spectroscopic methods viz. UVvisible, Fluorescence and FTIR spectroscopy. Steady-state and dynamic rheological experiments carried out with nanoparticle-free and nanoparticles added crude oil clearly exhibits that at different temperature ranges, the nanoparticles help in improving the flow properties by modifying the viscoelastic-network. The silica nanoparticles produced a higher reduction in viscosity compared to alumina nanoparticles and showed different effects on the behavior of both the samples. Thus, nanoparticles could be an important agent for flow assurance, where the proper molecular-level characterization of crude oils would help in selecting the nanoparticles for better performance. 2020 Elsevier Ltd

275

Fuel

2020

Anto, Rincy

Deshmukh, Sameerjit

Sanyal, Saheli

Bhui, Uttam K.

journalArticle

162361

10.1016/j.fuel.2020.117873