Engineered Nanoparticles for Unconventional Hydrocarbon Resource Recovery

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Canada's oil sands deposit extends over 142,200 km2 in northern Alberta. With approximately 168 billion barrels of proven reserves, this deposit is the third largest proven crude oil reserve in the world following the Arabia and Venezuela. Canada's other unconventional hydrocarbon resources such as tight oil and tight gas are also abundant. Unlocking these resources is, nevertheless, challenging and employs material and energy intensive processes. These processes incur high cost and severe environmental footprint. Given the current oil and gas market and public awareness, industry is in dire need for innovative, efficient processes to sustain Canada's unconventional hydrocarbon utilization. Nanotechnology, via engineered nanoparticles (NPs), offers viable routes for unconventional hydrocarbon exploration, production and upgrading. Our previous work has demonstrated the superior performance of NPs in catalyzing oil upgrading and improving the performance of drilling fluids. A major difference between our approach and the literature is the use of in-house/in situ prepared/modified NPs. In situ preparation of NPs entails carrying out finely balanced reactions which lead to a superior control over resultant particle size and their state of dispersion. Our approach constitutes a platform technology which enables the preparation and surface modification of a wide variety of inorganic NPs ranging between 5 nm to 70 nm, each suited for a given application. The current proposal explores the application of in-house prepared and/or modified NPs to promote the functionality of polymer flooding fluids and fracturing fluids. The requested fund will enable the pursuit of the following paths. 1) The design of novel NP-polymer flooding sols composed of strongly associated NPs and polymers. Such a sol is better able to displace oil; including heavy oils, from reservoirs by virtue of its high viscosity and strongly interconnected front. Highly interconnected NP-polymer sols can be achieved via in situ preparation of NPs. Furthermore, only low amounts of the NPs are needed to preserve the polymer from thermal, mechanical and chemical degradation. Subsequently, lower mass of the polymer is needed, which in turn reduces the cost and environmental footprint of polymer flooding. 2) Engineering smart fracturing nanofluid with temperature-tunable viscosity. Such a fluid delivers the proppants to tight reservoirs with minimum friction. In the meantime, it does not pose restriction toward hydrocarbon flow, once the fracturing job is complete. Smart fracturing fluids are highly desired, especially given the cost and environmental footprint of the current fracturing operations. Ultimately, our work contributes to improving the efficacy, while reducing the cost and the environmental impact of Canada's unconventional hydrocarbon resource utilization. This, in turn, attracts more local and foreign investors, which creates more job opportunities for the Canadians.