Research Projects

India ranks third globally in energy consumption, primarily relying on fossil fuels like crude oil. Despite efforts to replace these fossil fuels with renewable sources like solar, wind, and hydroelectric, India still relies heavily on traditional fossil fuels like crude oil. The country's oil recovery rate from oil fields is poor due to the lack of advanced technology. In 2018, the Indian government proposed the Enhanced Recovery (ER) policy to develop new technologies for enhanced crude oil recovery. This project aims to develop a novel and smart enhanced oil recovery (sEOR) method for extracting residual oil from underground reservoirs. The proposed method will use the elastic turbulence (ET) phenomenon and nanobubble technology. ET occurs due to non-linear elastic stresses in viscoelastic fluids, resulting in chaotic and fluctuating flow fields. Nanobubbles, tiny gas bubbles, can penetrate pores of porous rocks, making the method more energy-efficient. The project will primarily use CO2 nanobubbles to reduce or sequester this greenhouse gas, making it more eco-friendly. Experiments and simulations will be conducted to investigate the oil displacement mechanism. The proposed smart enhanced oil recovery method has the potential to revolutionize India's energy sector.