Carbon nanotubes (CNT) for enhanced oil production from shales
Master thesis
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2351804Utgivelsesdato
2014Metadata
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Sammendrag
The shale gas production has brought a revolution in US energy market and the globalprospect of shale gas production is on continuous increase. The advancements in hydraulic fracturing made it possible to extract very low permeability shale gas throughfracturing the shale rock. The once fractured shale rock is kept open with the inductionof spherical particles known as proppants. The performance of proppants is crucial foroil & gas production. Therefore, the prospect of application of carbon nanotubes wasexplored in the present work for the development of proppants particles. The proppantstesting was carried out with N2 Physiosrption, xrd, density measurement, treating withthe 12:3 HCl:HF solution and Instron strength testing. The proppants testing resultsshowed excellent properties for ceramics proppants but the performance of sand proppantswas very poor.
The poor performance of sand proppants attracted motivation for the application ofcarbon nanotubes to improve the properties of sand proppants. The Chemical VaporDeposition method was used for the growth of carbon nanotubes around the surface ofsand particles. The testing of CNTs grown proppants was carried out for analysis ofimprovements in the properties of proppants. There ware no observable improvementsin sphericity and strength of the sand with the coating of carbon nanotubes. There wasdecrease in density of CNTs sand particles which was considered to be an improvement.The increase in surface area with CNTs grown sand was motivation for developmentof multifunctional proppants to be used as vehicle for chemical delivery in the reservoir. The multifunctional prospect of the CNTs sand proppants was explored with theadsorption of phosphonates scale inhibitor on the surface of the CNTs sand particle.The results presented an increase in phosphonates loading with the increase in CNTsyield and reaction time which is considered to be and indication that the application ofCNTs can provide breakthrough in the development of multi purpose proppants. So,the carbon nanotubes has potential to find applications for development of proppants.