Nanotechnology and global energy demand: challenges and prospects for a paradigm shift in the oil and gas industry.

The exploitation of new hydrocarbon discoveries in meeting the present global energy demand is a function of the availability and application of new technologies. The relevance of new technologies is borne out of the complex subsurface architecture and conditions of offshore petroleum plays. Conventional techniques, from drilling to production, for exploiting these discoveries may require adaption for such subsurface conditions as they fail under conditions of high pressure and high temperature. The oil and gas industry over the past decades has witnessed increased research into the use of nanotechnology with great promise for drilling operations, enhanced oil recovery, reservoir characterization, production, etc. The prospect for a paradigm shift towards the application of nanotechnology in the oil and gas industry is constrained by evolving challenges with its progression. This paper gave a review of developments from nano-research in the oil and gas industry, challenges and recommendations

QSPR study of viscoplastic properties of peptide-based hydrogels

OnlinePublIn this study, the power of machine learning was harnessed to probe the link between molecular structures of peptide-based hydrogels and their viscoplastic properties. The selection of compounds was attempted in accordance with the prescribed full list of peptide-based materials exhibiting hydrogel functionality in the literature. In this pursuit, a complete set of molecular descriptors and fingerprints was considered – accounting for an entry of size 17,968 for each peptide-based structure analyzed. The elastic and viscous moduli response of materials were mapped over a wide frequency spectrum in the range [0.1–100] (rad/s). In general, the results indicate that the frequency-dependent mechanical response of peptide-based hydrogels is statistically correlated with its (inter)molecular attributes, such as charge, first ionization potential (or equivalently electronegativity), surface area, number of chemical substrates, bond type, and intermolecular interactions. The performance of several (supervised) soft computing techniques was measured, for our quantitative structure property relationships model. In addition, the hypothesis of mapping our databank to a new system of principal components was tested, by using an unsupervised methodology, which resulted in enhancement of the prediction accuracy. In terms of significance, the present article provides the first report of frequency-dependent elastic and viscous moduli, for a set of 70 peptide-based formulations with hydrogel functionality.Mostafa Montazeri, Mahsa Baghban Salehi, Babak Fazelabdolabadi, Saeed Golmohammad

An experimental investigation of smart-water wettability alteration in carbonate rocks – oil recovery and temperature effects

The smart water flooding has found tremendous applications in the oil recovery sector. This technique is designed by changing the concentrations of cations – mainly SO₄ ²¯, Ca²⁺, and Mg²⁺ – in the synthetic water mixtures being injected. The complexity of the underlying reaction mechanism, compared to the sandstone counterparts, calls for substantial research in this field. The present article lists an experimental investigation of wettability alteration in carbonate rocks by focusing on the role of individual ions for the fluid-solid interactions. The oil recovery results are reported for five synthetic smart waters, as well as the real formation water in the temperature range between 25 and 70 Celsius. A chemical-based mechanism is proposed – supported by zeta-potential data – to render the role of ions in the wettability alteration process. The smart-water samples are designed to hold the same level of total dissolved solids as the seawater of the Persian Gulf. The increase in the concentration of SO₄ ²¯ ion is found to accelerate the rate of reaction in the crude oil-brine-rock (CBR) system, resulting in more wettability alteration. In addition, the Mg²⁺ ion is rendered more effective in the wettability change process than the Ca²⁺ ion. The seawater enriched with sulfate ions (two/four-fold) has yielded the highest recovery, with essential increase in higher temperatures. The elevation of temperature to 70°C has yielded an impressive outcome on the recovery – approximately 17.20% – for the best smart-water samples evaluated.Mostafa Montazeri, Babak Fazelabdolabadi, Abbas Shahrabadi, Amideddin Nouralishahi, Ahmad HallajiSani, and Seyed Mohammad Ali Moosavia