Effects of Core Size and Surfactant Choice on Fluid Saturation Development in Surfactant/Polymer Corefloods.

Surfactant/polymer flooding allows for a significant increase in oil recovered at both laboratory and field scales. Limitations in application at the reservoir scale are, however, present and can be associated with both the complexity of the underlying displacement process and the time-intensive nature of the up-scaling workflow. Pivotal to this workflow are corefloods which serve to both validate the extent of oil recovery and extract modeling parameters used in upscaling.

Mesoscale Simulations Reveal How Salt Influences Clay Particles Agglomeration in Aqueous Dispersions.

The aggregation of clay particles is an everyday phenomenon of scientific and industrial relevance. However, it is a complex multiscale process that depends delicately on the nature of the particle-particle and particle-solvent interactions. Toward understanding how to control such phenomena, a multiscale computational approach is developed, building from molecular simulations conducted at atomic resolution to calculate the potential of mean force (PMF) profiles in both pure and saline water environments.

Long-Range Ionic and Short-Range Hydration Effects Govern Strongly Anisotropic Clay Nanoparticle Interactions.

The aggregation of clay particles in aqueous solution is a ubiquitous everyday process of broad environmental and technological importance. However, it is poorly understood at the all-important atomistic level since it depends on a complex and dynamic interplay of solvent-mediated electrostatic, hydrogen bonding, and dispersion interactions. With this in mind, we have performed an extensive set of classical molecular dynamics simulations (included enhanced sampling simulations) on the interactions between model kaolinite nanoparticles in pure and salty water.

Physical apparatus parameters and model for vibrating tube densimeters at pressures to 140 MPa and temperatures to 473 K.

Vibrating tube densimeters are well-established tools for measuring fluid densities precisely at elevated temperatures and pressures. However, the conventional method of calibrating them utilises a model in which the apparatus parameters are represented as polynomials of temperature and pressure that contain a variable number of terms. Here a robust, physically-based model is presented and demonstrated for six different instruments at temperatures from (273 to 473) K, pressures from (0 to 140) MPa, and densities from (0 to 1050) kg m(-3).