Simulation of Nanofluid Flooding in a Micromodel with Quadratic Pore Shape Using CFD

In this paper, simulation of nanofluid flooding using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique was investigated.In order to better visualization of the flow behavior, a 2D micromodel was used. To create the porous medium networkand check that results are grid independent, a commercial grid generation tool (Gambit 2.3) was applied. The injectedfluids were prepared using dispersed phase of SiO2 or TiO2 nanoparticles in distilled water, and the nanofluids weretreated as a mixture of two phases. To study the multiphase flow of displacing fluid and oil at the pore scale in themicromodel, governing equations were solved by the finite volume method. Simulation results were confirmed byexperimental data and a good agreement was observed. The oil recovery factors of nanofluids flooding were comparedwith water and solvent flooding, and numerical data show that nanoparticles improve the sweep efficiency of displacingfront which is resulted in conformance control of fingering.

Keywords:

Nanoparticle , Computational Fluid Dynamics , Nanofluid , Enhanced Oil Recovery , Micromodel