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Adsorption is a rock surface phenomenon and has increasingly become popular, especially in particle-transport applications across many fields. This has drawn a remarkable number of publications from the industry and academia in the last decade, with many review articles focused on adsorption of polymers, surfactants, gas, and nanoparticles in porous media with main applications in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). The discussions involved both experimental and modeling approaches to understanding and efficiently mimicking the particle transport in a bid to solve pertinent problems associated with particle retention on surfaces. The governing mechanisms of adsorption and desorption constitute an area under active research as many models have been proposed but the physics has not been fully honored. Thus, there is a need for continuous research effort in this field. Although adsorption/desorption process is a physical phenomenon and a reversible process resulting from inter-molecular and the intramolecular association between molecules and surfaces, modeling these phenomena requires molecular level understanding. For this reason, there is a wide acceptance of molecular simulation as a viable modeling tool among scientists in this area. This review focuses on existing knowledge of adsorption modeling as it relates to the petroleum industry cutting across flow through porous media and EOR mostly involving polymer and surfactant retention on reservoir rocks with the associated problems. The review also analyzes existing models to identify gaps in research and suggest some research directions to readers.

Given the adverse externalities of hydrocarbon operations, particularly the impacts of oil spills – environmental, political, cultural and socio-economic – the hypothetical simulations of oil spills enhances the study and appreciation of the trajectory and fate of spilled oil in the marine environment; so as to plan timely and cost effective clean-up responses and management strategies. This paper therefore presents the results of a rapid hypothetical simulation of oil spills in Ghana’s coastal waters, and the clean-up technique(s) most applicable in the area. Using MIKE 21, tidal elevations were used as forcing to run the hydrodynamic model, after which a series of hypothetical simulations were conducted with the worst case scenario divulging both the trajectories of the oil slicks and the potential areas to be impacted. The simulation results closely matched the results highlighted in the Phase-1-Development EIA report of the Jubilee Field. Following the simulation, an assessment of the most viable clean-up technique was conducted. Given the geophysical state of the coastal system and the met-ocean conditions, the mechanical recovery method, complemented by bioremediation, is most applicable due to its marginal environmental impacts.