Harnessing biochemical innovations for sustainable oil recovery: perspectives from the Indian context on green enhanced oil recovery (GEOR) methods for matured petroleum fields.

Green enhanced oil recovery (GEOR) has emerged as an eco-friendly alternative to conventional oil recovery techniques, offering a more sustainable way to increase oil extraction while minimizing environmental harm. This review focuses on the potential of biochemicals, particularly biopolymers, and biosurfactants, in improving oil recovery in Indian oilfields. While these biochemicals, such as xanthan gum, scleroglucan, and HEC, have shown promising results in global oilfields, their application in India remains largely unexplored.

Functionalized nanoparticles: Tailoring properties through surface energetics and coordination chemistry for advanced biomedical applications.

Significant advances in nanoparticle-related research have been made in the past decade, and amelioration of properties is considered of utmost importance for improving nanoparticle bioavailability, specificity, and catalytic performance. Nanoparticle properties can be tuned through in-synthesis and post-synthesis functionalization operations, with thermodynamic and kinetic parameters playing a crucial role. In spite of robust functionalization techniques based on surface chemistry, scalable technologies have not been explored well.

Pore-scale flow simulation of supercritical CO and oil flow for simultaneous CO geo-sequestration and enhanced oil recovery.

Recently, carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) with enhanced oil recovery (EOR) have gained a significant traction in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Information on pore-scale CO fluid behavior is vital for efficient geo-sequestration and EOR. This study scrutinizes the behavior of supercritical CO (sc-CO) under different reservoir temperature and pressure conditions through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, applying it to light and heavy crude oil reservoirs.

Interaction of low salinity surfactant nanofluids with carbonate surfaces and molecular level dynamics at fluid-fluid interface at ScCO loading.

Hypothesis: The advanced low salinity aqueous formulations are yet to be validated as an injection fluid for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) from the carbonate reservoirs and CO geosequestration. Interaction of various ionic species present in the novel low salinity surfactant nanofluids with scCO/CO saturated aqueous phase interface and at the interface of CO saturated aqueous phase/mixed wet (with CO and Decane) limestone surface at the conditions of low salinity at reservoir conditions are to yet to be understood.

Experiments: This study, carried out for the first time in low salinity at scCO loading conditions at 20 MPa pressure and 343 K temperature, comprises of wettability study of the limestone surface by aqueous phase contact angle measurements using ZrO nanoparticles (in the concentration range of 100-2000 mg/L) and 0.

Oil Recovery Efficiency and Mechanism of Low Salinity-Enhanced Oil Recovery for Light Crude Oil with a Low Acid Number.

Low salinity waterflooding (low salinity-EOR) has attracted great interest from many giant oil producers and is currently under trial in some of the oil fields of the United States, Middle Eastern countries, and North Sea reservoirs. Most of the reported studies on this process were carried out for medium to relatively heavy oil with significant polar contents. In this work, we have investigated low salinity waterflooding performance for light paraffinic crude oil with a low acid number.

Pore scale investigation of low salinity surfactant nanofluid injection into oil saturated sandstone via X-ray micro-tomography.

Hypothesis: Low salinity surfactant nanofluids have recently shown promising characteristics in wettability alteration of the silicate-based rock representative substrate and interfacial tension reduction of oil/aqueous phase interface. Pore level understanding of the physical processes entailed in this new class of low salinity injection fluids in oil-phase saturated real rock porous media is required, which has not been conceived yet.

Experiments: Thus, we investigate the oil recovery performance and possible mechanisms of oil recovery by the injection of low salinity surfactant (SDBS, 1.

High pressure rheology of gas hydrate formed from multiphase systems using modified Couette rheometer.

Conventional rheometers with concentric cylinder geometries do not enhance mixing in situ and thus are not suitable for rheological studies of multiphase systems under high pressure such as gas hydrates. In this study, we demonstrate the use of modified Couette concentric cylinder geometries for high pressure rheological studies during the formation and dissociation of methane hydrate formed from pure water and water-decane systems. Conventional concentric cylinder Couette geometry did not produce any hydrates in situ and thus failed to measure rheological properties during hydrate formation.

Systematic investigations on the biodegradation and viscosity reduction of long chain hydrocarbons using Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Pseudomonas fluorescens.

The use of microorganisms has been researched extensively for possible applications related to hydrocarbon degradation in the petroleum industry. However, attempts to improve the effect of microorganisms on the viscosity of hydrocarbons, which find potential use in the development of robust models for biodegradation, have been rarely documented. This study investigates the degradation of long chain hydrocarbons, such as hexadecane and eicosane using Pseudomonas fluorescens PMMD3 (P.