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Department of Chemical Engineering Annual Report 2015
16
Research Council of Norway through the NANO2021
Program
GREENEOR: GREEN HIGH PERFORMANCE
SYSTEMS FOR ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY (NFR
PETROMAKS 2014-2016)
Enhanced oil recovery is also the topic of the newly
started project GreenEOR: Green high performance
systems for Enhanced Oil Recovery.The objective of the
GreenEOR project is to contribute to enhanced oil
recovery in a sustainable manner, by developing a novel
series of green fluids for chemical EOR applications based
on nanocellulose, alone or in combination with other
EOR surfactants. The project is led by PFI and the R&D
partners in the project are PFI, NTNU – Department of
Petroleum Engineering and Applied Geophysics and
NTNU – Ugelstad Laboratory. The project is funded by
the Research Council of Norway through the Petromaks
2program.
NANOVISC: DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-
PERFORMANCE VISCOSIFIERS AND TEXTURE
INGREDIENTS FOR INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS
BASED ON CELLULOSE NANOFIBRILS (CNF).
Ugelstad Laboratory collaborates with Pulp and Fiber
Institute (PFI) in the NanoVisc project: Development of
high-performance viscosifiers and texture ingredients for
industrial applications based on Cellulose Nanofibrils
(CNF). The project is collaboration between Ugelstad
Laboratory, PFI and Innventia as research partners, and
Borregaard AS, Stora Enso, Mercer, Mills DA and Norcem
as industrial partners. The effect of CNF surface
chemistry and morphology on rheology will be studied as
a function of different external parameters such as
salinity, temperature and the presence of co-solutes. The
application of CNF as rheology modifier for emulsions
and cements will also be considered.
SMART AND MULTIFUNCTIONAL CORE-SHELL
NANO-PARTICLES (NPS) FOR DRUG DELIVERY.
(2012-2016)
Core-shell nano-particles (NPs) represent a new class of
materials, possessing tunable multifunctional properties
for which they find wide applications in electronics,
catalysis, separations, drug delivery and medical
diagnostics. The field of medical diagnostics and drug
delivery is one of the most important application fields
of such nano-constructs. This comes with the need to
unite various functionalities like contrasting, targeting,
imaging into a single nanostructured system, integrating
the strengths of individual modalities in order to produce
multifunctional constructs.
The project aims at synthesizing and characterizing core-
shell NPs suited to targeted drug delivery applications.
The optimized NPs would therefore be screened for
surface functionalization with multiresponsive block
copolymers, synthesized in-house to target drugs and
small molecules. These nano-constructs will be tested in
regards to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast
agent, targeted drug delivery and other pertinent
applications. These nanomaterials will have
multifunctional applications in diagnostic and
therapeutic fields.