Fluorinated Polyzwitterion Coatings for Stabilizing Colloids and Lowing Retention of Nanoparticles

Nanoparticles (NP) injected in hydrocarbon reservoirs, as inter-well tracers or an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method, has been of great interest in petroleum engineering. However, NP's retention in reservoir conditions of high salinity and high temperature is one of the challenges in these applications because high retention is economically unfavorable. We explored the concept of applying lightly fluorinated polyzwitterions as a coating on hydrophobic styrenic nanoparticles that had previously shown significant adsorption on rock surfaces. This is a less explored area of research that correlates the properties of polymer and NPs retention to the structure variation of polymers and polymer coatings. The fact that a small fraction of a functional comonomer on a common polymer backbone can significantly change the polymer and NPs retention provides a low-cost option of modifying the retention property of common oil field materials.