Fines migration control in sandstone formation by improving silica surface zeta potential using a nanoparticle coating process

Fines migration is the major reason for productivity decline known as formation damage in oil reservoirs. Nanofluids are good candidates for being injected into nearby wellbore regions because of their very small sizes for remediation purposes. In this article, a novel experimental procedure is utilized to study the use of different types and concentrations of nanoparticles to reduce fines migration in synthetic porous materials. Three types of nanoparticles, MgO, SiO₂, and Al₂O₃, are used here as coating agents of the porous media grains to investigate the reduction of fines movement. The results indicate that the use of 0.97 wt% of MgO nanoparticles injected into the medium improves adsorption of fines by 20% more than the reference state. The obtained results were confirmed with the calculation of dimensionless total energy of interaction.