| dc.description.abstract | The shale gas production has brought a revolution in US energy market and the global
prospect of shale gas production is on continuous increase. The advancements in hydraulic fracturing made it possible to extract very low permeability shale gas through
fracturing the shale rock. The once fractured shale rock is kept open with the induction
of spherical particles known as proppants. The performance of proppants is crucial for
oil & gas production. Therefore, the prospect of application of carbon nanotubes was
explored in the present work for the development of proppants particles. The proppants
testing was carried out with N2 Physiosrption, xrd, density measurement, treating with
the 12:3 HCl:HF solution and Instron strength testing. The proppants testing results
showed excellent properties for ceramics proppants but the performance of sand proppants
was very poor.
The poor performance of sand proppants attracted motivation for the application of
carbon nanotubes to improve the properties of sand proppants. The Chemical Vapor
Deposition method was used for the growth of carbon nanotubes around the surface of
sand particles. The testing of CNTs grown proppants was carried out for analysis of
improvements in the properties of proppants. There ware no observable improvements
in sphericity and strength of the sand with the coating of carbon nanotubes. There was
decrease 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 development
of multifunctional proppants to be used as vehicle for chemical delivery in the reservoir. The multifunctional prospect of the CNTs sand proppants was explored with the
adsorption of phosphonates scale inhibitor on the surface of the CNTs sand particle.
The results presented an increase in phosphonates loading with the increase in CNTs
yield and reaction time which is considered to be and indication that the application of
CNTs can provide breakthrough in the development of multi purpose proppants. So,
the carbon nanotubes has potential to find applications for development of proppants. | |
