application of cfd to investigate the efficiency of water and nanofluid flooding in enhanced oil recovery

In recent years, the use of nanotechnology as one of the new methods of enhanced oil recovery (eor) has been considered by many researchers. however, few studies have addressed water and nanofluid flooding from a mesoscopic point of view. therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the influence of water and nanoparticles flooding on eor in pore-scale using comsol multiphysics software and the micro-ct imaging technique. the navier -stokes equations and the phase-field model were coupled to describe the flooding process and trace the interface between the two phases. the impact of injection fluid velocity and concentration of sio2 nanofluid on eor in water-wet and oil-wet reservoirs were analyzed. a quantitative comparison of nanofluid and water flooding showed that by increasing the volume fraction of sio2 from 20% to 50%, the rate of oil recovery increases by 1.5%, while this amount is 18% compared to water flooding. from the results, it has been found that the residual oil decreases proportionally to increasing velocity. in addition, the flow paths, velocity, and pressure profile in actual porous media have been scrutinized.