​

Ahmed Saad was among the many ANPERC students completing internships over the summer. Ahmed spent three months with the Experimental Soft Condensed Matter Group, led by Professor David Weitz at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

"I worked on studying viscoelasticity of crude oil-water interfaces. This interfacial viscoelasticity affects the emulsion stability which is critical for phase separation in oil fields. In addition, it influences the flow dynamics at pore-scale which eventually affects the oil recovery. It is also crucial to understanding the development of mixed wettability in oil reservoirs and how we can unstick the residual oil by tuning the brine chemistry in the subsurface."

Saad presented his work at the 80th New England Complex Fluids Workshop at Brandeis University. The project is expected to continue as a collaboration between Harvard University, KAUST, and Schlumberger Doll Research Center at Cambridge.

To see Ahmed Saad and Dr. Tadeusz Patzek talking about SPE student activities, see this recent interview with KAUST Live.