PRRC Research

Advanced Materials in Hydrocarbon Production

Section Head:

Advanced materials (AM) involve engineering properties of existing materials for improved performance, with examples like titanium and carbon fiber. Nanotechnology, focusing on dimensions of 1 to 100 nanometers, is a crucial aspect of AM research, allowing for the manipulation of materials at the nanoscale for enhanced properties and applications in hydrocarbon recovery technologies.

Alkali Surfactant Polymers (ASP)

Lead Scientist: Dr. Guoyin Zhang

Formulates and develops alkali surfactant polymer (ASP) treatments for enhanced recovery of oil and evaluates existing ASP treatments.

Gas Flooding Processes and Flow Heterogeneities

Lead Scientist: Dr. Sai Wang

Studies carbon storage in geologic formations, improving conformance control and sweep efficiency in CO2 flooding, injectivity changes associated with water alternating with gas injection (WAG) and improved modeling of CO2 foam-enhancing processes and WAG injection.

Industry Service & Outreach Group (ISOG)

Lead

Makes public data available in intuitive and user-friendly formats and works with other organizations to provide information about new or under-used technologies available to the independent oil and gas community.

Petrophysics and Surface Chemistry

Lead Scientist: Tian Fan

Studies surface and interfacial properties of crude oils, wettability alteration and crude oil/brine/rock interactions, stability of asphaltenes, and the effects of surfactants used in core cleaning on wettability assessment.

Produced Water in Petroleum Engineering

Lead Scientist: Dr. Jianjia Yu

Pursues advanced methods of treating oilfield produced water through innovative membrane technology.

Reservoir Evaluation/Advanced Computational Technologies (REACT)

Lead Scientist: Dr. William Ampomah

Develops new technologies using computational intelligence, geostatistics and fuzzy logic to solve the unique problems encountered in reservoir characterization and numerical simulation of oil and gas reservoirs using data of all scales.

Reservoir Sweep Improvement

Lead Scientist: Dr. Randall Seright

Performs research and development to improve reservoir sweep efficiency and reduce saltwater production during oil and gas recovery operations.

Petroleum Recovery Research Center

PRRC 2023 · A Division of New Mexico Tech · NMT

Research

Research and Groups at PRRC