Article
Engineering, Chemical
Mohammadreza Poshtpanah, Arman Darvish Sarvestani, Hassan Mahani, Behzad Rostami
Summary: By adding partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) polymer to the injection low-salinity (LS) brine, the negative effect of in situ mixing with the resident high-salinity (HS) brine can be efficiently mitigated in low-salinity waterflooding (LSWF). Microfluidic experiments in granular porous media were conducted to directly observe the impact of polymer concentration, injection rate, and heterogeneity on salt dispersion. The results show that polymer-enhanced low-salinity waterflooding (PELS) can improve the displacement of HS brine and reduce the required pore volume of LS to establish low-salinity condition in the porous medium.
TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Ahmed M. Selem, Nicolas Agenet, Martin J. Blunt, Branko Bijeljic
Summary: In this study, the underlying pore-scale mechanisms of the low salinity waterflooding process were investigated to understand its impact on oil recovery. The experiments revealed that the injection of low salinity brine improved the wettability of the reservoir rock, leading to the formation of water micro-droplets within the oil phase and detachment of oil layers from the rock surface.
JOURNAL OF COLLOID AND INTERFACE SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Daniel Isong Otu Egbe, Ashkan Jahanbani Ghahfarokhi, Menad Nait Amar, Ole Torsaeter
Summary: Low-salinity waterflooding (LSWF) has been studied for its impact on ion exchange and wettability alteration in carbonate cores to improve oil recovery. The results show wettability alteration is crucial for the increased oil recovery during LSWF, with sensitivity analysis on key parameters performed for process optimization.
NATURAL RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Priyadarshini Bhicajee, L. Romero-Zeron
Summary: Low salinity waterflooding (LSW) is a promising enhanced oil recovery process that alters the wettability of rocks to improve production. This study evaluated the effect of different flooding schemes on LSW performance and identified multi-component ionic exchange as the dominant mechanism for wettability alteration during the recovery of heavy oil from unconsolidated sands.
Article
Energy & Fuels
Ali Khalilnezhad, Mohammad Simjoo, Nima Hamidian
Summary: The study explored the phenomenon of viscous fingering during tertiary Low-Sal injection in a core sample, using fractional flow theory to explain the occurrence. The model provided accurate predictions for breakthrough time and oil recovery factor based on experimental data, demonstrating good agreement between the model outcome and lab results.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Suparit Tangparitkul, Chris S. Hodges, Dewi A. Ballard, Zhen Niu, Diego Pradilla, Thibaut V. J. Charpentier, Zhenghe Xu, David Harbottle
Summary: Experimental results show that low-salinity injection can improve oil recovery at different temperatures and pressures; the optimal brine concentration can achieve maximum dewetting effects.
JOURNAL OF COLLOID AND INTERFACE SCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
A. L. Herring, C. Sun, R. T. Armstrong, M. Saadatfar
Summary: Residual trapping is essential for the security and sustainability of geologic sequestration operations. Recent experiments indicate that cycles of scCO2 and brine injections can cause surface chemistry reactions, enhancing residual trapping. This study uses X-ray microcomputed tomography to investigate the alteration mechanism and provides new insights into the conditions under which wettability alteration affects scCO2 flow and trapping.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF GREENHOUSE GAS CONTROL
(2023)
Review
Energy & Fuels
Soumitra B. Nande, Samarth D. Patwardhan
Summary: Low salinity waterflooding has become an important method for additional oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs in recent years. However, existing literature lacks a comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms. This paper provides a detailed review and analysis of research on low salinity waterflooding in carbonates, and offers a roadmap for future research in the field.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Edward Andrews, Ann Muggeridge, Alistair Jones, Samuel Krevor
Summary: Low salinity water flooding is a promising enhanced oil recovery technique, but it is currently difficult to predict which systems will respond favorably. This study provides insights into the role of pore geometry and topology on oil mobilization during low salinity water flooding.
Article
Energy & Fuels
M. Mohammadi, H. Nikbin-Fashkacheh, H. Mahani
Summary: The research found that the chemical composition of brine impacts both the ultimate oil recovery and its speed. The highest and fastest oil recovery was obtained with diluted seawater and seawater augmented with nanoparticles. In addition, ex-situ contact angle results can predict the performance of each brine at the pore network-scale.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Physical
M. Golmohammadi, S. Mohammadi, H. Mahani, S. Ayatollahi
Summary: Oil polarity is an important property that affects the efficiency of low salinity waterflooding. The concentration of acidic polar oil constituents and the type of non-polar fractions can change the trapped oil saturation during waterflooding. Increasing the concentration of polar components reduces the interfacial tension and improves the sweep efficiency of waterflooding. The oil recovery factor is logarithmically correlated with oil polarity.
JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR LIQUIDS
(2022)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Edward Andrews, Ann Muggeridge, Gaetano Garfi, Alistair Jones, Samuel Krevor
Summary: Changing the wetting state of rocks through low-salinity flooding can facilitate oil recovery, with 22% of oil being redistributed within the rock. However, this wetting alteration only leads to an additional recovery of three percentage points. Observations using X-ray scanning show how oil and brine redistribute in the pores of rocks in response to low-salinity flooding.
Article
Chemistry, Physical
Rohit Kumar Saw, Prathibha Pillai, Ajay Mandal
Summary: In recent decades, low salinity water flooding (LSWF) has gained attention for its effectiveness in oil recovery. However, there is a lack of studies in the literature on the potential of using Ionic Liquids (ILs) as candidates for chemical enhanced oil recovery (CEOR) combined with LSWF. This study evaluates the synergistic effect of ILs with varying chain lengths with low saline ion tuned seawater (ITSW) for enhanced oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs. The analysis shows that ILs demonstrate a better synergistic effect with ITSW, reducing interfacial tension, altering rock wettability, and exhibiting less adsorption density at the reservoir temperature. ILs with the longest chain length ([C12mim] [BF4]) show superior properties and significantly increase oil recovery in low saline ITSW.
JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR LIQUIDS
(2022)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Borhan Shahmohammadi, Mohammad Chahardowli, Mohammad Simjoo
Summary: This study uses flow experiments in montmorillonite-coated micromodels to investigate the interactions among an acidic crude-oil, brine with different salinities and clay. The results show that low salinity water injection can significantly increase the partitioning of crude oil polar components in the aqueous phase, leading to the formation of an emulsified phase and improved wettability alteration for enhanced oil recovery in the microscale.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
(2022)
Article
Engineering, Petroleum
Tianzhu Qin, Paul Fenter, Mohammed AlOtaibi, Subhash Ayirala, Ali AlYousef
Summary: Controlled-ionic-composition waterflooding can alter carbonate mineral wettability and improve oil recovery. Experimental results indicate that water with higher sulfate ion concentrations is more effective in displacing oil in carbonate rock samples.
Article
Water Resources
Hamidreza Erfani, Masoud Babaei, Carl Fredrik Berg, Vahid Niasar
Summary: Solubility trapping of carbon dioxide (CO2) in deep saline aquifers is an effective mechanism for carbon storage. This study investigates the scaling relations of convective mixing in the dissolution of CO2 in aquifer brine. The results provide new insights into the factors affecting the dissolution flux and onset time of convection, which are important for the prioritization and selection of appropriate aquifers for geological CO2 storage.
ADVANCES IN WATER RESOURCES
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
A. M. Norouzi, V Niasar, J. G. Gluyas, M. Babaei
Summary: Salt precipitation during CO2 injection into saline aquifers is a significant phenomenon that reduces permeability and injectivity. Capillary pressure drives brine backflow in water-wet systems, leading to more precipitation. We developed an analytical solution considering the effect of capillary pressure, which was validated using numerical simulations. The solution accurately estimated the influence of capillary pressure on injectivity impairment due to salt precipitation.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Sandra Macia, Pedro J. Martinez-Ferrer, Eduard Ayguade, Vicenc Beltran
Summary: This paper presents an automated process of generating high-performance parallel codes using domain-specific languages (DSLs) for solving Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) problems. By combining low-level optimizations and parallelization strategies, the generated codes achieve high-performance single core executions and can scale effectively to multi-core and distributed environments.
JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Monika S. Walczak, Hamidreza Erfani, Nikolaos K. Karadimitriou, Ioannis Zarikos, S. Majid Hassanizadeh, Vahid Niasar
Summary: Solute transport in heterogeneous and fractured systems is complex. The mass exchange rate coefficient changes with time, and the transfer rate coefficient is smaller during the unloading process, possibly due to concentration-dependent counter-current advection-diffusion.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Physical
A. Pourakaberian, H. Mahani, V. Niasar
Summary: This study investigates the influence of nanoscale physicochemical heterogeneities at the rock/brine interface on low-salinity waterflooding. The results show that surface roughness and surface charge heterogeneity have significant effects on electrodiffusion and electrostatic disjoining pressure. Additionally, the effect of surface charge heterogeneity is more pronounced under low salinity conditions, while the effect of surface roughness is more pronounced under high salinity conditions.
COLLOIDS AND SURFACES A-PHYSICOCHEMICAL AND ENGINEERING ASPECTS
(2022)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Arman Darvish Sarvestani, Behzad Rostami, Hassan Mahani
Summary: This study investigates the impact of injection parameters on the performance of polymer-enhanced low-salinity waterflooding (PELS), revealing that adding a small amount of polymer can reduce salt dispersivity, higher injection rates intensify salt dispersivity, and the dependence of dispersivity on injection rate increases with salinity difference. Empirical and mathematical models were developed to predict the required volume of PELS. The results highlight the importance of PELS in enhancing the performance of formation brine displacement during low-salinity waterflooding and addressing the negative impact of salt dispersion.
Article
Energy & Fuels
Hamid Heydarzadeh Darzi, Mahdieh Fouji, Reyhaneh Ghorbani Heidarabad, Hamed Aghaei, Seyed Hasan Hajiabadi, Pavel Bedrikovetsky, Hassan Mahani
Summary: In this study, novel nanocomposite materials were synthesized and used to make nano-based drilling fluids (NDFs) to evaluate their performance in reducing formation damage caused by water-based drilling fluids. The results showed that the nanocomposites can effectively achieve water-clay separation and reduce the degree of formation damage.
JOURNAL OF NATURAL GAS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING
(2022)
Review
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Alessandro Usai, Constantinos Theodoropoulos, Fabrizio Di Caprio, Pietro Altimari, Giacomo Cao, Alessandro Concas
Summary: The design and optimization of microalgae processes have historically not taken into account the impact of cell-to-cell heterogeneity. However, recent experimental evidence suggests that this heterogeneity can be crucial in cultivation and downstream processes. Population balance equations (PBEs) provide a powerful approach for modeling cell-to-cell heterogeneity. This review discusses the potential of PBEs for analyzing and designing microalgae processes, with a focus on the univariate size/mass structured PBE.
COMPUTATIONAL AND STRUCTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY JOURNAL
(2023)
Article
Energy & Fuels
Ali Balavi, Hassan Mahani, Shahab Ayatollahi
Summary: In this study, a new experimental protocol was developed to investigate the destabilization effect of brine salinity and calcite rock presence on asphaltene in an emulsified system. The results showed that asphaltene became more unstable when in contact with brine, and the presence of solid calcite particles increased asphaltene deposition in the emulsified system.
Article
Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology
Evgeniia Lavrenteva, Constantinos Theodoropoulos, Michael Binns
Summary: In this study, a set of nonlinear equations is proposed to model the growth of avascular tumors, considering nutrient supply, innate immune response, cell migration inhibition, and chemotherapy interactions. The model is validated against experimental data and shows that tumor size and regression depend on the host immune system. The effects of chemotherapy are investigated within the tumor as well as on immune cells and healthy tissue near the tumor.
BIOENGINEERING-BASEL
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Theory & Methods
Sandra Macia, Pedro J. Martinez-Ferrer, Eduard Ayguade, Vicenc Beltran
Summary: Scientific applications face the challenge of efficiently exploiting increasingly complex parallel and distributed systems. Developing hand-tuned codes is a time-consuming and tedious task, hence the need for domain-specific languages (DSLs) to decouple problem description from algorithmic implementation. This work evaluates Saiph, a task-based DSL for high-performance computing (HPC), using the Taylor-Green Vortex (TGV) problem as a case study. The evaluation demonstrates Saiph's productivity, numerical methods, and high-performance strategies, contributing to the popularization of HPC DSLs as suitable problem-solving environments.
FUTURE GENERATION COMPUTER SYSTEMS-THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ESCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Theory & Methods
Pedro J. Martinez-Ferrer, Tufan Arslan, Vicenc Beltran
Summary: This study proposes hybrid implementations of four classical linear algebra iterative methods on CPUs, and assesses their relative efficiencies through weak and strong scalability benchmarks. The results show that task-based hybrid parallelisation outperforms MPI-only and fork-join hybrid implementations in terms of weak scalability. The task-based model achieves speedups of up to 25% larger than its MPI-only counterpart. For strong scalability scenarios, hybrid methods based on tasks remain more efficient with moderate computational resources. Fork-join hybridisation often yields mixed results and does not seem to bring a competitive advantage over MPI approach.
JOURNAL OF PARALLEL AND DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING
(2023)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Sina Omrani, Mehdi Ghasemi, Mrityunjay Singh, Saeed Mahmoodpour, Tianhang Zhou, Masoud Babaei, Vahid Niasar
Summary: Hydrogen (H-2) underground storage is an efficient strategy for large-scale storage. This study employed molecular dynamics simulation to develop a dataset for the interfacial tension (IFT) between H-2 and brine systems, and established a reliable correlation using three machine learning approaches.
Article
Engineering, Chemical
Mohammadreza Poshtpanah, Arman Darvish Sarvestani, Hassan Mahani, Behzad Rostami
Summary: By adding partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) polymer to the injection low-salinity (LS) brine, the negative effect of in situ mixing with the resident high-salinity (HS) brine can be efficiently mitigated in low-salinity waterflooding (LSWF). Microfluidic experiments in granular porous media were conducted to directly observe the impact of polymer concentration, injection rate, and heterogeneity on salt dispersion. The results show that polymer-enhanced low-salinity waterflooding (PELS) can improve the displacement of HS brine and reduce the required pore volume of LS to establish low-salinity condition in the porous medium.
TRANSPORT IN POROUS MEDIA
(2023)
Review
Energy & Fuels
Mahsa Shirazi, Hassan Mahani, Yousef Tamsilian, Ann Muggeridge, Mohsen Masihi
Summary: A comprehensive assessment and analysis of different water-based chemical enhanced oil recovery (CEOR) methods is presented in this review paper. It critically reviews the technical, economical, surface, subsurface, and environmental challenges associated with CEOR, as well as the determining factors for success. The outcome of this integrated investigation can be used as a basis for the development of a holistic CEOR screening workflow.