21^st World Nanotechnology Congress

Satisfying worldwide energy demand in the 21st century is the most challenging problematic. New kinds of energy sources along with the new technological breakthroughs to maintain enough oil and gas supply are intensely needed to meet the incredible rise in world’s energy demand. Recent dramatic fall in oil prices has accentuated the problem. Now, the challenge is to fill out the increasing gap between energy demand and supply with more cost effective techniques. Recently, Abu Dhabi University has filed a patent application (US–Patent Application No 15/342,664) reporting the invention of Dr. Omar Chaalal that fulfi lls practically all criteria discussed above. In this paper, a “green substitute” to chemical flooding is proposed. Th e new technology proposed uses two types of plant extracts that increases the total oil recovery to 96% of initial

oil in place (IOIP) during the tertiary recovery mode. While water flood recovered around 50% of the IOIP, 0.5% wt of the natural plant extract recovered 77% in the secondary recovery mode. The additives were extracted from two plants available in the United Arab Emirates (Product A and Product B). Th ese natural extracts proved to be very eff ective in formations containing water with a salinity range of 70,000 to 180,000 ppm with temperature going up to 100^o C.