Experimental study of viscosity properties of emulsion system with SiO2 nanoparticle

When oil production is increasing due to intensive oilfield development methods supporting seam pressure by water injection oil producers face the problem of displacement agent break in more permeable intervals of petroleum reservoir. That leads to dramatic increase of product inundation for well stock and decrease of economic efficiency for well performance. Nowadays the petroleum engineers have proposed more than 100 technologies designed to restrict water inflows and flooding agent to bottom-hole zone of the production wells. The water inflows restriction technologies are distinguished by the type of applied chemical compositions and the way how the chemical compositions are delivered to bottom-hole zone. The analysis of the currently applied chemical compositions has allowed authors to reveal the common feature. The common feature is that the currently applied chemical compositions are non-selective and they produce isolating or blocking effect onto water-saturated and oil-saturated zones of the petroleum reservoir. The application of the nonselective high-stability chemical compositions leads to uncontrolled colmatation of all treated intervals and makes it difficult to involve them into filtration process in future. This work presents the technology for the selective reservoir stimulation based on emulsion systems with SiO2 nanoparticles content and gelling acid composition. The technology was developed for complex impact on formation system, that achieved by blocking water-saturated intervals of reservoir and stimulation of less permeable oil-saturated intervals of reservoir. The paper shows the results of complex laboratory experiments to study viscosity parameters of emulsion systems with SiO2 nanoparticles content. The results of the experiments revealed the ability of the SiO2 nanoparticles to rise dynamic viscosity of the different type of emulsion systems: oil in water and water in oil. Test for thermostability of the modified emulsion systems showed stability of the systems under 80°C. In addition, the modified emulsion systems kept the ability to decrease significantly viscosity in the reaction with hydrocarbons, i.e. the emulsion systems with SiO2 nanoparticles are selective compositions for the water-inflows restriction.