Synthesis and Characterization of Yttrium Iron Garnet (YIG) Nanoparticles Activated by Electromagnetic Wave in Enhanced Oil Recovery

Due to the geographical location and technological limitation, various novel enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods has been proposed to recover the remaining oil from a depleted oil reservoir. Research on application of nanoparticles either on its own or coupled with other stimulating agents has been growing enormously and some of them have shown a promising future. In high temperature and high pressure reservoirs, thermal degradation will cause failure to the conventional chemicals. In this work, temperature-stable YIG magnetic nanoparticles with an electromagnetic wave has been proposed as a new candidate for reservoir stimulating agent. The purpose of nanoparticle injection is to increase the sweep efficiency in the reservoir by increasing the viscosity of displacing fluid. In this research, Yttrium iron garnet (YIG) nanoparticles have been injected into a waterflooded oil saturated porous medium to recover the remaining oil in the presence of an electromagnetic wave. At the sintering temperature 1200°C, a mixture of hematite and YIG was obtained, suggesting a higher temperature for single phase YIG. From VSM analysis, the average magnetic saturation, coercivity and remanence are 18.17 emu/g, 21.73 Oe and 2.38 emu/g, respectively. 1.0 wt% of YIG nanofluid was prepared and subsequently injected into the pre-saturated porous medium in the presence of square electromagnetic wave of 13.6 MHz. As much as 43.64% of the remaining oil in place (ROIP) was recovered following the injection of 2 pore volume of YIG nanofluid.