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Crude oil exists in porous rock formations. Exploring for oil is undoubtedly a challenge. Nanomaterials are small enough to reach where normal materials can not, inside the pore frameworks hardly hundreds of nanomaterials in diameter.

CENT works on developing nanomaterials that can float inside these pores during flooding, interrogate the porous system and signal whether there is oil, what type of oil, how much oil, and whether or not there are pockets of water due to water injection in the rock formations.

Focusing on the S. Aramco invented the concept of resbots (reservoir robots), the purpose of our research is to develop advanced nano-materials that integrate good attributes of polymers, silica, semiconductors, and oxides, thus offering a multiplicity of functionalities including optical, magnetic, chemical and electric-based interrogation. Effectively, our passive nanomaterials should emulate the role of active miniature robots.

The materials are designed to be stable in rock pores under harsh oil well and rock formation conditions while providing superior detection sensitivity and discrimination.

The advanced materials are to be used to develop integrated smart tracing, sensing, and oil sniffing devices for exploration in oil fields.