Emerging applications of nanomaterials in chemical enhanced oil recovery: Progress and perspective

In enhanced oil recovery, different chemical methods utilization improves hydrocarbon recovery due to their fascinating abilities to alter some critical parameters in porous media, such as mobility control, the interaction between fluid to fluid, and fluid to rock surface. For decades the use of surfactant and polymer flooding has been used as tertiary recovery methods. In the current research, the inclusion of nanomaterials in enhanced oil recovery injection fluids solely or in the presence of other chemicals has got colossal interest. The emphasis of this review is on the applicability of nanofluids in the chemical enhanced oil recovery. The responsible mechanisms are an increment in the viscosity of injection fluid, decrement in oil viscosity, reduction in interfacial and surface tension, and alteration of wettability in the rock formation. In this review, important parameters are presented, which may affect the desired behavior of nanoparticles, and the drawbacks of nanofluid and polymer flooding and the need for a combination of nanoparticles with the polymer are discussed. Due to the lack of literature in defining the mechanism of nanofluid in a reservoir, this paper covers majorly all the previous work done on the application of nanoparticles in chemical enhanced oil recovery at home conditions. Finally, the problems associated with the nano-enhanced oil recovery are outlined, and the research gap is identified, which must be addressed to implement polymeric nanofluids in chemical enhanced oil recovery.