Application of oil palm mill effluent and palm bunch emulsion as chemicals in enhanced oil recovery
| dc.contributor.author | Ndem, Daniel Oji | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2026-03-23T13:35:27Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2026-03-23T13:35:27Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025-07 | |
| dc.description | This thesis is submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD.) in Petroleum Engineering | |
| dc.description.abstract | Chemical enhanced oil recovery is one of the popular techniques used in the petroleum industry, and most of the chemicals are imported and expensive. Therefore, it is important to develop cheaper and indigenous chemicals for enhancing oil recovery from Nigerian oil reservoirs. This research focused on the formulation of emulsions for emulsion flooding of residual oil from oil reservoirs using locally available agricultural waste materials from palm oil mill. Oil was extracted from palm oil mill effluent using a centrifuge; alkaline solution was prepared with distilled water and ash from burnt empty fruit bunch. Oil/Alkali solution emulsions were formulated using different ratios of oil/palm bunch ash solution (5/95, 10/90, 15/85, 20/80, 25/75, 30/70, 35/65, 40/60, 45/55). Nine core samples of determined dimensions were initialized at reservoir conditions by flooding them with brine of salinity of 30000ppm until the differential pressure became stabilized. To produce the brine upon pressure stabilization, and determine the original oil in place, the brine- saturated core samples were flooded with crude oil (32.9 API). Then the crude oil-saturated core samples were firstly flooded with water till oil production ceased with 58.3% of oil recovered. Lastly, to produce the oil-in-place, the previously water flooded core samples, were respectively flooded with the formulated emulsions of 15/85, 25/75, 30/70, 35/65, 40/60 and Oil/Alkali solution ratios due to their stability performance. The results revealed that water flooding yielded 32.5% of the oil in the respective core samples while different ratios of formulated emulsion (15/85, 25/75, 30/70, 35/65, 40/60) yielded incremental oil recovery of 30.4%, 32.8%, 35.2%, 51.6%, and 55.2% ..The experiments suggest that certain emulsion compositions enhance the mobilization and displacement of oil better, leading to high reservoir sweep efficiency.. The economic analysis shows that t investment in the production of conventional emulsion sample has negative net present value of -499,507,552,185.00 Naira throughout a 10-year period, while investment in the production of 30/70 emulsion sample with oil extracted from palm oil mill effluent and palm bunch ash solution has positive net present value of 26,940,828,073.20 Naira. A mathematical proxy model developed for oil recovery efficiency prediction gave an R-square of 95.2%. This work has established that these emulsion samples can yield encouraging oil recoveries when used in enhanced oil recovery. | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Ndem, D. O. (2025). Application of oil palm mill effluent and palm bunch emulsion as chemicals in enhanced oil recovery [Unpublished Doctoral Thesis]. Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://repository.futo.edu.ng/handle/20.500.14562/2457 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | Federal University of Technology, Owerri | |
| dc.rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ | |
| dc.subject | Palm oil mill effluent | |
| dc.subject | empty palm fruit bunch | |
| dc.subject | emulsion flooding | |
| dc.subject | core flooding | |
| dc.subject | recovery efficiency | |
| dc.subject | palm bunch ash | |
| dc.subject | Department of Petroleum Engineering | |
| dc.title | Application of oil palm mill effluent and palm bunch emulsion as chemicals in enhanced oil recovery | |
| dc.type | Doctoral Thesis |