Higher yield from oil recovery aim of new industrial partnership FOM, NWO CW and BP
The FOM Foundation and NWO Chemical Sciences (NWO CW) have started a (Chemical) Industrial Partnership Programme (CH)IPP with the company BP. The parties involved, who recently formalised this partnership, will focus on the physical-chemical processes during oil recovery from sandstone. The ultimate aim is to increase the yield of oil recovery. Over the next five years a team will work on this research under the leadership of professor Frieder Mugele with a budget of more than 3 million euros.
The researchers will use both experimental and theoretical techniques on a series of well- defined model systems. In addition they will develop a microchip to monitor the yield of oil recovery on a small scale.
On the boundary of physics and chemistry
Oil recovery is a complex process that is dependent on physical and chemical phenomena at different scales and research into oil recovery covers both physics and chemistry. Therefore FOM and NWO CW have sought collaboration and a unique multidisciplinary research programme has been realised: a mix of an Industrial Partnership Programme (IPP) from FOM and a Chemical Industrial Partnership Programme (CHIPP) from NWO CW.
Multidisciplinary collaboration
This (CH)IPP is a continuation and expansion of a previous successful collaboration between the group of Frieder Mugele and BP. The consortium consists of teams from the University of Twente (Frieder Mugele, Martien Cohen Stuart, Michel Duits, Dirk van den Ende, Igor Siretanu and Cees Otto), FOM Institute AMOLF (Huib Bakker), Utrecht University (René van Roij) and Radboud Universiy Nijmegen (Elias Vlieg). They will also collaborate with the University of California (Miquel Salmeron). In total the programme will offer a position to one tenure-tracker, six PhD students and two postdocs.
Top Sector Chemistry
The research ties in with the Top Sector Chemistry and the NWO CW Fund New Chemical Innovations (NCI). With this fund, NWO is contributing to the Top Sector Chemistry via the funding of public-private partnership projects in chemistry. For this programme a so-called TKI allowance has been applied for, which is part of the programme budget. The Ministry of Economic Affairs encourages collaboration between companies and knowledge institutions such as universities, NWO, FOM, Technology Foundation STW, TNO and ECN by awarding TKI allowances. These amount to 25 percent of the in-cash private contributions and a smaller allowance for in-kind contributions.
Further information
For further information about this programme please see www.fom.nl/ipp. This new (CH)IPP has the title 'Rock-on-a-Chip: Salt-controlled wettability alteration in oil-water-solid systems for applications in enhanced oil recovery (ROAC)', number i40.
For further information please contact:
Prof. Frieder Mugele, programme leader, +31 53 489 30 94
Dr. Martijn de Jager, programme coordinator at FOM, +31 30 600 12 73
Dr. Maarten de Zwart, policy officer at NWO CW, +31 70 344 06 97