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This paper introduces new oil recovery mechanisms for oil recovery by polymer injection in heavy oil reservoirs with strong bottom aquifers. Due to unfavorable mobility ratio between aquifer water and oil and the development of the sharp cones significant amount of oil remains unswept. To overcome these issues, for the case demonstrated in this paper, a polymer injection pilot was executed with three horizontal injectors, located a few meters above the oil/water contact. The injectivity issues resulted in frequent shutdowns of the injectors. Interestingly, the water cut reversal and oil gain continued during the shut-in periods. This observation has led to the development of a new cyclic polymer injection strategy, in which the injection of polymer is alternated with intentional well shut-ins. The strategy is referred to as Nothing-Alternating-Polymer (NAP). It was found that during polymer injection, the oil is recovered by conventional mobility and sweep enhancement mechanisms ahead of the polymer front. Additionally, during this stage the injected polymer squeezes the existing cones and creates a barrier between the aquifer and the oil column, suppressing the aquifer flux and hence the negative effect of the cones or water channels (blanketing mechanism). Moreover, injection of polymer pushes the oil to the depleted water cones, which is then produced by the water coming from the aquifer during shut-in period (recharge mechanism). During the shut-in or NAP period, the aquifer water also pushes the existing polymer bank and hence leads to extra oil production. The resistance caused by polymer adsorption reduces the extent of fingering of water into polymer bank. The NAP strategy reduces polymer loss into aquifer and improves the polymer utilization factor expressed in kg-polymer/bbl of oil, resulting in a favorable economic outcome., Petroleum Engineering

With an ever-increasing human population, access to clean water for human use is a growing concern across the world. Seawater desalination to produce usable water is essential to meet future clean water demand. Desalination processes, such as reverse osmosis and multi-stage flash have been implemented worldwide. Reverse osmosis is the most effective technology, which uses a semipermeable membrane to produce clean water under an applied pressure. However, membrane biofouling is the main issue faced by such plants, which requires continuous cleaning or regular replacement of the membranes. Chlorination is the most commonly used disinfection process to pretreat the water to reduce biofouling. Although chlorination is widely used, it has several disadvantages, such as formation of disinfection by-products and being ineffective against some types of microbes. This review aims to discuss the adverse effect of chlorination on reverse osmosis membranes and to identify other possible alternatives of chlorination to reduce biofouling of the membranes. Reverse osmosis membrane degradation and mitigation of chlorines effects, along with newly emerging disinfection technologies, are discussed, providing insight to both academic institutions and industries for the design of improved reverse osmosis systems., QC 20210920

Polymer flooding displacement ability during petroleum extraction from the earth's crust plays an important role in enhanced oil recovery processes. Produced water, as a byproduct, still contain high concentrations of petroleum hydrocarbons and partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) which is a serious environmental concern. Remediating produced water economically is a big challenge for meeting the permissible discharge limits leading to failure in the effectiveness of the conventional water treatment technologies. Advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) are playing increasing role in the treatment of polluted water and is receiving much attention in recent times as a green and safer water treatment technology. Here we report a new approach to use vertically aligned zinc oxide nanorods (ZnO NRs) supported on substrates engineered for improving their visible light harvesting capacity for effective solar photocatalytic degradation of HPAM. The viscosity of collected oilfield produced water containing HPAM were found to be reduced dramatically when the samples are photocatalytically degraded using ZnO nanorod catalysts irradiated with simulated solar light showing a reduction of 51% within 6 h. With high pressure liquid chromatography 68, 62, 56 and 45% removal of 25, 50, 100 and 150 ppm HPAM, respectively, was demonstrated. The pH of the solution was observed to move to acidic region due to acetamide, nitrate, propionamide and acetic acid which are the intermediate byproducts formed during degradation as determined by mass spectrometry. Zinc oxide nanorod coatings showed about 74% removal efficiency over 5 cycles with less than 1.2% removal of zinc ions after 6 h of light irradiation., Export Date: 22 October 2018; Article; CODEN: CMEJA; Correspondence Address: Al-Abri, M.; Department of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, PO Box 33, PC 123, Oman; email: alabri@squ.edu.om; Funding details: TRC, The Research Council; Funding details: SQU, Sultan Qaboos University; Funding text: Authors would like to thank The Research Council , Oman, for its financial support. We would like to acknowledge College of Science (Department of Chemistry) and College of Engineering (Department of Petroleum and Chemical Engineering), Sultan Qaboos University , Oman for technical support. Furthermore, special thanks to Mr. Kristian Pastor from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia and Mr. Azzan Al-Khadori from Sultan Qaboos University, Oman for discussions and assistance during the course of this work. Appendix A. QC 20181126

Photocatalysis is a green technology which typically utilizes either supported or colloidal catalysts for the mineralization of aqueous organic contaminants. Catalyst surface area and surface energy are the primary factors determining its efficiency, but correlation between the two is still unclear. This work explores their relation and hierarchy in a photocatalytic process involving both supported and colloidal catalysts. In order to do this the active surface areas of supported zinc oxide nanorods (ZnO NR's) and colloidal zinc oxide nanoparticles (having different surface energies) were equalized and their phenol oxidation mechanism and capacity was analyzed. It was observed that while surface energy had subtle effects on the oxidation rate of the catalysts, the degradation efficiency was primarily a function of the surface area; which makes it a better parameter for comparison when studying different catalyst forms of the same material. Thus we build a case for the use of supported catalysts, wherein their catalytic efficiency was tested to be unaltered over several days under both natural and artificial light, suggesting their viability for practical applications., QC 20170619

Sea water intrusion in ground water sources has made brackish water desalination a necessity in Oman. The application of capacitive deionization (CDI) for the deionization of ground water samples from wells in Al-Musanaah Wilayat is proposed and demonstrated. A CDI cell is fabricated using nanoporous activated carbon cloth (ACC) as the electrodes and is shown to be power efficient for desalting ground water samples with total dissolved solids (TDS) of up to 4,000 mg/l. The CDI cell was able to remove up to 73% of the ionic scaling and fouling contaminants from brackish water samples. The power consumption for deionization of brackish water was estimated to be 1 kWh/m3 of desalinated water, which is much lower than the power required to process water with equivalent TDS by the reverse osmosis processes. The CDI process is elaborated, and observations and analysis of the ion adsorption characteristics and electrical properties of the capacitive cell are elucidated., QC 20160329