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ENS5145 Engineering Honours Thesis 1

Proposal and Risk Assessment Report

Wettability alteration of Shale by using nanofluid for Enhanced Gas Recovery

AMJAD ALRAJHI

Student # 10492965

28 August 2020

Supervisor: Dr Ahmed Yaseri

Ethics Declaration Checklist (to be completed by student)
Does this project involve the use of:	YES/NO
(a) Human participants,	NO
(b) Previously collected confidential data,	NO
(c) Animals for scientific purposes?	NO
If ‘YES’ to any of the above, then the proposal will not be approved and you will not be allowed to proceed with this project. By submitting this report through the unit website for assessment, you certify that the information provided above is true and correct.

Abstract

The concept for Wettability alteration of Shale by using nanofluid for Enhanced Gas Recovery (EGR) is a new area discussion which had not been tested and studied as far as in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). In this paper, more studies and papers about the method will be used such as searching for advantages and disadvantages of the method. The main purpose of this paper is to find what is the best way to increase CO2 absorption and increase Methane recovery from shale by changing shale wettability using Nanofluid.

1. Introduction

1.1. Motivation

Energy demand has significantly increased in the last few decades. This increase led the producers to change their focus from conventional to unconventional resources. Also, different researchers start to work to improve technology to produce unconventional resources like tight gas, shale gas, coal bed etc in the most efficient way. Although, extraction cost of shale gas is very expensive, but the prices been affected by increasing demand which make it economical to produce unconventional resources. Now the oil and gas industry has developed technologies that is cost efficient and possible to improve the efficiency of unconventional resources recovery (GWPC et al.,2009). Unconventional Reservoirs have a greater volume compare to the conventional reservoirs which have been an interesting part for the oil and gas industry in the last years. According to (Maters 1979), although unconventional resources are considered to be low quality reservoirs because they have very low permeability, but they are much larger than conventional reservoirs with good quality.

Enhanced gas recovery is one of the technologies that used in unconventional resources which is refer to the processes, technologies, or approaches applied to enhance gas recovery factor. Primary factor for shale formation is about 25 to 30 percent (Hasan et al.,2017). This method increases unconventional wells life and improve the recovery factor.one of the method that used to enchase gas recovery is injecting Co2 into gas reservoirs which is a new topic and on field tests has been reported. However, some fresh researches have presented that the injection of CO2 will be profitable for the countries that have huge gas reservoir and a smaller number of oil reservoirs (Moghadasi & Sarapardeh,2018).

In the last few years, the use of nanofluids to prepare non-wettable surfaces got a lot of attention because of its ability in many fields like anti-reflection and transparency (Yan et al., 2011).There is a small number of published reports of using nanoparticles for rocks wettability alteration to gas wetting state. This method is effective for building practical multiscale structures of different morphologies which make it possible to produce surfaces with omniphobic nature Mousavi et al. (2013).

1.2. Objectives

The main objective of this project is to find what is the best way to increase CO2 absorption and increase Methane recovery from shale by changing shale wettability using Nanofluid. This objective can be achieved by finding the following information and data. Find what is the pros and cons of the method. Also, find the best nano type which can change shale wettability to increase gas recovery. Moreover, find out the optimum nano-concentrations for different particles. Furthermore, knowing the nano working conditions like pressure, temperature etc. Also, compare nano results with other chemicals and find out if the nano method is better than others. This project will focus more on Carbon Dioxide CO2 absorption to produce Methane CH4 and excluding other techniques.

1.3. Significance

As the energy consumption around the world is increasing in the last years, the oil and gas industry is having some challenges in finding materials and safe environmental operations. Therefore, it is significant to use methods like nanofluid for Enhanced Gas recovery to increase the produced amount of gas (Wittle,2008). There is a small number of studies and tests about this subject in the field, so it is very important to investigate more which what this project about. This project will benefit the field in having more knowledge about using nanofluid for Enhanced Gas recovery.

2. Proposed Approach

The project will consist of several tasks which need to be done successfully and sequentially to achieve the main objective. As a literature review project, the tasks will include the databases and bodies of literature which will drive the review. A summary of the assignments and tasks can be shown in Attachment 1. Most papers that will be used in this project is from two main journal websites which are One Petro and Engineering Village.

The first task is searching for the advantages and disadvantages of the nanofluid method. The advantages part can be completed by looking at the benefits, profits, and opportunities of the method. On the other hand, for the disadvantages, search for the method problems and weakness.

The second task is finding the best nano type which can change shale wettability to increase gas recovery. This task can be done by searching for multiple nano types and compare them to find out which type will work the best on shale. One of the papers that will be used to solve this task is a paper on “liquid-repellency of TiO2, SiO2 and CNT nanostructures which applied for wettability alteration of carbonate reservoir rock” (Esmaeilzadeh et al.,2015).

The third task is looking for the optimum nano-concentrations for various nano particles. The task can be successfully completed by investigating different nano particle concentration and find the best concentration for each particle. The paper ‘’ OPTIMUM SAND CONCENTRATIONS in WELL TREATMENTS” may be used in this task (Dehlinger et al.,1954).

The fourth task is knowing the nano working conditions such as pressure, temperature, and other conditions. One of the best papers to use to complete this task is a paper titled “Surfactant adsorption behaviours onto shale from Malaysian formations: Influence of silicon dioxide nanoparticles, surfactant type, temperature, salinity and shale lithology”(Yekeen et al.,2019).

Last task is comparing nano results with other chemicals and find out if the nano method is better than others. This task is dependent in completing the other tasks because some results that found in the other tasks will be used to complete this task.

3. Timeline

A Gantt chart has been used to make this project organized and easier to complete which can be found in Attachment 1. Two separate charts have been made, one for semester two 2020 and the other one for semester one 2021. Each chart includes tasks and assessments that must be completed in a period of 13 weeks. Each task of the project has sub tasks which have to be completed on time. Every task has checking and finalizing sub task which will help to fix any problems that happened while completing the other sub tasks.

4. Risk Assessment

As a literature review project, all the work is done using the computer. Therefore, the overall risk rating is low which can be seen in the risk assessment matrix – Attachment 1. All the risks have been allocated to a risk reference which consist of one of the below groups:

· CMP – Computer

· PER – Personal

· ERG – Ergonomics

· SUP – supervisor

Most of the risks are naturally low because of the low chance of happening or its low effect on the project. There are two medium risks which are CMP_01 and ERG_01 risks due to its medium effect on the project. For the CMP_01 risk, losing project work will lead to loss time and effort because of forgetting to save the work. This risk can be reduced and minimised by using auto save option so the work will be auto saved. Another solution is using online backup storage to save the project work. For ERG_01 risk, Eye strain Can completely stop the work which will affect the project time. This risk can be easily avoided and reduced by taking some breaks every 2 hrs.

5. Progress to Date

The current status of the project boils down to two parts. Understand the project and what is the project about. Planning and finding some sources that will be used on writing this literature review project.

6. Conclusion

The oil and gas industry are having some challenges in the past years as the energy demand is increasing. Therefore, it is important to use some new methods that will increase the rate of production. One of the methods is using nanofluid for Enhanced Gas Recovery in wettability alteration of Shale. The main objective the project is to find what is the best way to increase CO2 absorption and increase Methane recovery from shale by changing shale wettability using Nanofluid. This project will breck down into five tasks in a period of two semesters. There are some risks that will affect the project such as losing data and getting sick.

7. References

GWPC, All Consulting, NETL, and US Department of Energy. (2009). Modern Shale Gas Development in the United States: A Primer, Groundw. Prot. Counc., p. 116.

J. A. Masters, Deep Basin gas trap, western Canada. (1979, Feb). Am. Assoc. Pet. Geol. Bull., vol. 63, no. 2, p. 152 LP-181.

Hasan, M., Eliebid, M., Mahmoud, M., Elkatatny, S., & Shawabkeh, R. (2017). Enhanced Gas Recovery (EGR) Methods and Production Enhancement Techniques for Shale & Tight Gas Reservoirs. Dammam, Saudi Arabia: Society of Petroleum Engineers.

Moghadasi, R., & Sarapardeh, A. (2018). In Fundamentals of Enhanced Oil and Gas Recovery from Conventional and Unconventional Reservoirs.

Yan, L., Lv, H., Wang, C., Yuan, X (2011). Hydro-oleophobic silica antireflective films

with high laser damage threshold. Opt. Laser Technol. 43, 232e236.

Mousavi, M.A., Hassanajili, Sh, Rahimpour, M.R. (2013). Synthesis of fluorinated

nano-silica and its application in wettability alteration near-wellbore region in

gas condensate reservoirs. Appl. Surf. Sci. 273, 205e214.

J. K. Wittle. D.G Hill, G.V. Chilingar. (2008). Direct Current Electrical Enhanced Oil Recovery in

Heavy-Oil Reservoirs to Improve Recovery, Reduce Water Cut, and Reduce H2S Production While Increasing API Gravity, paper SPE-114012, Bakersfield, California, USA.

Esmaeilzadeh, P., Sadeghi, M. T., Fakhroueian, Z., Bahramian, A., & Norouzbeigi, R. (2015). Wettability Alteration of Carbonate Rocks from Liquid-wetting to Ultra Gas-wetting Using TiO2, SiO2 and CNT Nanofluids Containing Fluorochemicals, for Enhanced Gas Recovery.

Yekeen, N., Padmanabhan, E., Idris, A. K., & Ibad, S. M. (2019). Surfactant adsorption behaviors onto shale from Malaysian formations: Influence of silicon dioxide nanoparticles, surfactant type, temperature, salinity and shale lithology. Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, 179, 841-854. doi: 10.1016/j.petrol.2019.04.096.

Dehlinger, P., Browne, W. H., & Bundrant, C. O. (1954, November 1). Optimum Sand Concentrations in Well Treatments. Society of Petroleum Engineers. doi:10.2118/404-G

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Attachment 1 – Timeline Chart

Attachment 2 – Risk Assessment Matrix

Risk Reference

Risks

Consequences

Current Risk Treatments

Current Level of Risk

Additional Risk Treatments

Residual Level of Risk

Likelihood

Consequence

Risk Level

Ranking

Likelihood

Consequence

Risk Level

Ranking

PER_01

Getting stressed because of the project work

Decrease the willingness to work and study

Plan for completing the project which does not exceed 3 hrs a week work

2

2

4

L

None required

2

2

4

L

PER_02

Sickness

Decrease the ability to work which can led to stress

Visit a doctor for treatment

2

2

4

L

None required

2

2

4

L

CMP_01

Data loss

Loss time and effort because of forgetting to save the work

Using auto save option so the work will be auto saved

3

2

6

M

Use online backup storage to save the project work

2

2

4

L

ERG_01

Eye strain

Cannot continue working

Have some breaks every 2 hrs

2

2

6

M

Visit the doctor

1

1

1

L

SUP_01

Supervisor is available

lake of help may lead to misinformation

Make appointment before some time

1

2

2

L

None required

1

2

2

L

Activity Overall Risk Rating

0.00

Low