scholarly journals Properties of Biodegradable Polymer from Terrestrial Mushroom for Potential Enhanced Oil Recovery

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1382
Author(s):  
Tengku Amran Tengku Mohd ◽  
Shareena Fairuz Abdul Manaf ◽  
Munawirah Abd Naim ◽  
Muhammad Shafiq Mat Shayuti ◽  
Mohd Zaidi Jaafar

Polymer flooding could enhance the oil recovery by increasing the viscosity of water, thus, improving the mobility control and sweep efficiency. It is essential to explore natural sources of polymer, which is biologically degradable and negligible to environmental risks. This research aims to produce a biodegradable polymer from terrestrial mushroom, analyze the properties of the polymer and investigate the oil recovery from polymer flooding. Polysaccharide biopolymer was extracted from mushroom and characterized using Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer (FTIR), while the polymer viscosity was investigated using an automated microviscometer. The oil recovery tests were conducted at room temperature using a sand pack model. It was found that polymer viscosity increases with increasing polymer concentration and decreases when increase in temperature, salinity, and concentration of divalent ions. The oil recovery tests showed that a higher polymer concentration of 3000 ppm had recovered more oil with an incremental recovery of 25.8% after waterflooding, while a polymer concentration of 1500 pm obtained incremental 22.2% recovery of original oil in place (OOIP). The oil recovery from waterflooding was approximately 25.4 and 24.2% of the OOIP, respectively. Therefore, an environmentally friendly biopolymer was successfully extracted, which is potential for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) application, but it will lose its viscosity performance at certain reservoir conditions.

1975 ◽  
Vol 15 (04) ◽  
pp. 338-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.T. Szabo

Abstract Numerous polymer floods were performed in unconsolidated sand packs using a C14-tagged, cross-linked, partially hydrolyzed ployacrylamide, and the data are compared with brine-flood performance in the same sands. performance in the same sands. The amount of "polymer oil" was linearly proportional to polymer concentration up to a proportional to polymer concentration up to a limiting value. The upper limit of polymer concentration yielding additional polymer oil was considerably higher for a high-permeability sand than for a low-permeability sand. It is shown that a minimum polymer concentration exists, below which no appreciable polymer oil can be produced in high-permeability sands. The effect of polymer slug size on oil recovery is shown for various polymer concentrations, and the results from these tests are used to determine the optimum slug size and polymer concentration for different sands. The effect of salinity was studied by using brine and tap water during polymer floods under similar conditions. Decreased salinity resulted in improved oil recovery at low, polymer concentrations, but it had little effect at higher polymer concentrations. Polymer injection that was started at an advanced stage of brine flood also improved the oil recovery in single-layered sand packs. Experimental data are presented showing the effect of polymer concentration and salinity on polymer-flood performance in stratified reservoir polymer-flood performance in stratified reservoir models. Polymer concentrations in the produced water were measured by analyzing the radioactivity of effluent samples, and the amounts of retained polymer in the stratified models are given for each polymer in the stratified models are given for each experiment. Introduction In the early 1960's, a new technique using dilute polymer solutions to increase oil recovery was polymer solutions to increase oil recovery was introduced in secondary oil-recovery operations. Since then, this new technique has attained wide-spread commercial application. The success and the complexity of this new technology has induced many authors to investigate many aspects of this flooding technique. Laboratory and field studies, along with numerical simulation of polymer flooding, clearly demonstrated that polymer additives increase oil recovery. polymer additives increase oil recovery. Some of the laboratory results have shown that applying polymers in waterflooding reduces the residual oil saturation through an improvement in microscopic sweep efficiency. Other laboratory studies have shown that applying polymer solutions improves the sweep efficiency in polymer solutions improves the sweep efficiency in heterogeneous systems. Numerical simulation of polymer flooding, and a summary of 56 field applications, clearly showed that polymer injection initiated at an early stage of waterflooding is more efficient than when initiated at an advanced stage. Although much useful information has been presented, the experimental conditions were so presented, the experimental conditions were so variable that difficulties arose in correlating the numerical data. So, despite this good data, a systematic laboratory study of the factors influencing the performance of polymer flooding was still lacking in the literature. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of polymer concentration, polymer slug size, salinity in the polymer bank, initial water saturation, and permeability on the performance of polymer floods. The role of oil viscosity did not constitute a subject of this investigation. However, some of the data indicated that the applied polymer resulted in added recovery when displacing more viscous oil. The linear polymer-flood tests were coupled with tests in stratified systems, consisting of the same sand materials used in linear flood tests. Thus, it was possible to differentiate between the role of polymer in mobility control behind the flood front in each layer and its role in mobility control in the entire stratified system through improvement in vertical sweep efficiency. A radioactive, C14-tagged hydrolyzed polyacrylamide was used in all oil-recovery tests. polyacrylamide was used in all oil-recovery tests. SPEJ P. 338


Processes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Al-Saleh ◽  
Abdirahman Yussuf ◽  
Mohammad Jumaa ◽  
Abbas Hammoud ◽  
Tahani Al-Shammari

The methodology to study an eco-friendly and non-toxic, Schizophyllan, biopolymer for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) polymer flooding is described. The methodology is divided into two parts; the first part estimates the molar concentration of the biopolymer, which is needed to prepare the biopolymer solution with optimal viscosity. This is required to improve the sweep efficiency for the selected reservoir in Kuwait. The second part of this generalized methodology evaluates the biopolymer solution capability to resist degradation and maintain its essential properties with the selected reservoir conditions. The evaluation process includes thermal and mechanical assessment. Furthermore, to study the biopolymer solution behavior in both selected reservoir and extreme conditions, the biopolymer solution samples were prepared using 180 g/L and 309 g/L brine. It was found that the prepared biopolymer solution demonstrated great capability in maintaining its properties; and therefore, can be introduced as a strong candidate for EOR polymer flooding with high salinity brines.


Author(s):  
Kelly Lúcia Nazareth Pinho de Aguiar ◽  
Luiz Carlos Magalhães Palermo ◽  
Claudia Regina Elias Mansur

Due to the growing demand for oil and the large number of mature oil fields, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques are increasingly used to increase the oil recovery factor. Among the chemical methods, the use of polymers stands out to increase the viscosity of the injection fluid and harmonize the advance of this fluid in the reservoir to provide greater sweep efficiency. Synthetic polymers based on acrylamide are widely used for EOR, with Partially Hydrolyzed Polyacrylamide (PHPA) being used the most. However, this polymer has low stability under harsh reservoir conditions (High Temperature and Salinity – HTHS). In order to improve the sweep efficiency of polymeric fluids under these conditions, Hydrophobically Modified Associative Polymers (HMAPs) and Thermo-Viscosifying Polymers (TVPs) are being developed. HMAPs contain small amounts of hydrophobic groups in their water-soluble polymeric chains, and above the Critical Association Concentration (CAC), form hydrophobic microdomains that increase the viscosity of the polymer solution. TVPs contain blocks or thermosensitive grafts that self-assemble and form microdomains, substantially increasing the solution’s viscosity. The performance of these systems is strongly influenced by the chemical group inserted in their structures, polymer concentration, salinity and temperature, among other factors. Furthermore, the application of nanoparticles is being investigated to improve the performance of injection polymers applied in EOR. In general, these systems have excellent thermal stability and salinity tolerance along with high viscosity, and therefore increase the oil recovery factor. Thus, these systems can be considered promising agents for enhanced oil recovery applications under harsh conditions, such as high salinity and temperature. Moreover, stands out the use of genetic programming and artificial intelligence to estimate important parameters for reservoir engineering, process improvement, and optimize polymer flooding in enhanced oil recovery.


2013 ◽  
Vol 807-809 ◽  
pp. 2607-2611
Author(s):  
Byung In Choi ◽  
Moon Sik Jeong ◽  
Kun Sang Lee

Water salinity and hardness have been regarded as main limitation for field application of polymer floods. It causes not only reduction of polymer concentration, but also injectivity loss in the near wellbore. Based on the mathematical and chemical theory, extensive numerical simulations were conducted to investigate performance of polymer floods in the high-salinity reservoirs. According to results from simulations, the high salinity reduces the viscosity of polymer in contacting area. That causes a poor sweep efficiency of polymer flooding. Moreover, the presence of divalent cations makes the project of polymer flooding worse. That is because of excessively increased bottom-hole pressure in injection well by the precipitation of polymer. The quantitative assessment of polymer floods needs to be required before field application. Therefore, the results in this paper are helpful for optimal polymer flooding design under harsh reservoir conditions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Ali Manzoor

Chemical-based enhanced oil recovery (EOR) techniques utilize the injection of chemicals, such as solutions of polymers, alkali, and surfactants, into oil reservoirs for incremental recovery. The injection of a polymer increases the viscosity of the injected fluid and alters the water-to-oil mobility ratio which in turn improves the volumetric sweep efficiency. This research study aims to investigate strategies that would help intensify oil recovery with the polymer solution injection. For that purpose, we utilize a lab-scale, cylindrical heavy oil reservoir model. Furthermore, a dynamic mathematical black oil model is developed based on cylindrical physical model of homogeneous porous medium. The experiments are carried out by injecting classic and novel partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide solutions (concentration: 0.1-0.5 wt %) with 1 wt % brine into the reservoir at pressures in the range, 1.03-3.44 MPa for enhanced oil recovery. The concentration of the polymer solution remains constant throughout the core flooding experiment and is varied for other subsequent experimental setup. Periodic pressure variations between 2.41 and 3.44 MPa during injection are found to increase the heavy oil recovery by 80% original-oil-in-place (OOIP). This improvement is approximately 100% more than that with constant pressure injection at the maximum pressure of 3.44 MPa. The experimental oil recoveries are in fair agreement with the model calculated oil production with a RMS% error in the range of 5-10% at a maximum constant pressure of 3.44 MPa.


Polymers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1046 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeed Akbari ◽  
Syed Mohammad Mahmood ◽  
Hosein Ghaedi ◽  
Sameer Al-Hajri

Copolymers of acrylamide with the sodium salt of 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid—known as sulfonated polyacrylamide polymers—had been shown to produce very promising results in the enhancement of oil recovery, particularly in polymer flooding. The aim of this work is to develop an empirical model through the use of a design of experiments (DOE) approach for bulk viscosity of these copolymers as a function of polymer characteristics (i.e., sulfonation degree and molecular weight), oil reservoir conditions (i.e., temperature, formation brine salinity and hardness) and field operational variables (i.e., polymer concentration, shear rate and aging time). The data required for the non-linear regression analysis were generated from 120 planned experimental runs, which had used the Box-Behnken construct from the typical Response Surface Methodology (RSM) design. The data were collected during rheological experiments and the model that was constructed had been proven to be acceptable with the Adjusted R-Squared value of 0.9624. Apart from showing the polymer concentration as being the most important factor in the determination of polymer solution viscosity, the evaluation of the model terms as well as the Sobol sensitivity analysis had also shown a considerable interaction between the process parameters. As such, the proposed viscosity model can be suitably applied to the optimization of the polymer solution properties for the polymer flooding process and the prediction of the rheological data required for polymer flood simulators.


SPE Journal ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (02) ◽  
pp. 249-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yunshen Chen ◽  
Amro S. Elhag ◽  
Benjamin M. Poon ◽  
Leyu Cui ◽  
Kun Ma ◽  
...  

Summary To improve sweep efficiency for carbon dioxide (CO2) enhanced oil recovery (EOR) up to 120°C in the presence of high-salinity brine (182 g/L NaCl), novel CO2/water (C/W) foams have been formed with surfactants composed of ethoxylated amine headgroups with cocoalkyl tails. These surfactants are switchable from the nonionic (unprotonated amine) state in dry CO2 to cationic (protonated amine) in the presence of an aqueous phase with a pH less than 6. The high hydrophilicity in the protonated cationic state was evident in the high cloudpoint temperature up to 120°C. The high cloud point facilitated the stabilization of lamellae between bubbles in CO2/water foams. In the nonionic form, the surfactant was soluble in CO2 at 120°C and 3,300 psia at a concentration of 0.2% (w/w). C/W foams were produced by injecting the surfactant into either the CO2 phase or the brine phase, which indicated good contact between phases for transport of surfactant to the interface. Solubility of the surfactant in CO2 and a favorable C/W partition coefficient are beneficial for transport of surfactant with CO2-flow pathways in the reservoir to minimize viscous fingering and gravity override. The ethoxylated cocoamine with two ethylene oxide (EO) groups was shown to stabilize C/W foams in a 30-darcy sandpack with NaCl concentrations up to 182 g/L at 120°C and 3,400 psia, and foam qualities from 50 to 95%. The foam produces an apparent viscosity of 6.2 cp in the sandpack and 6.3 cp in a 762-μm-inner-diameter capillary tube (downstream of the sandpack) in contrast with values well below 1 cp without surfactant present. Moreover, the cationic headgroup reduces the adsorption of ethoxylated alkyl amines on calcite, which is also positively charged in the presence of CO2 dissolved in brine. The surfactant partition coefficients (0 to 0.04) favored the water phase over the oil phase, which is beneficial for minimizing losses of surfactant to the oil phase for efficient surfactant usage. Furthermore, the surfactant was used to form C/W foams, without forming stable/viscous oil/water (O/W) emulsions. This selectivity is desirable for mobility control whereby CO2 will have low mobility in regions in which oil is not present and high contact with oil at the displacement front. In summary, the switchable ethoxylated alkyl amine surfactants provide both high cloudpoints in brine and high interfacial activities of ionic surfactants in water for foam generation, as well as significant solubilities in CO2 in the nonionic dry state for surfactant injection.


2014 ◽  
Vol 548-549 ◽  
pp. 1876-1880 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.A.T. Mohd ◽  
A. H. M. Muhayyidin ◽  
Nurul Aimi Ghazali ◽  
M.Z. Shahruddin ◽  
N. Alias ◽  
...  

Foam flooding is an established approach in Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) to recover a significant quantity of the residual oil left in the reservoir after primary and secondary recovery. However, foam flooding faces various problems due to low viscosity effect, which reduces its efficiency in recovering oil. Using surfactant to stabilize CO2foam may reduce mobility and improve areal and vertical sweep efficiency, but the potential weaknesses are such that high surfactant retention in porous media and unstable foam properties under high temperature reservoir conditions. Nanoparticles have higher adhesion energy to the fluid interface, which potentially stabilize longer lasting foams. Thus, this paper is aimed to investigate the CO2foam stability and mobility characteristics at different concentration of nanosilica, brine and surfactant. Foam generator has been used to generate CO2foam and analyze its stability under varying nanosilica concentration from 100 - 5000 ppm, while brine salinity and surfactant concentration ranging from 0 to 2.0 wt% NaCl and 0 – 10000 ppm, respectively. Foam stability was investigated through observation of the foam bubble size and the reduction of foam height inside the observation tube. The mobility was reduced as the concentration of nanosilica increased with the presence of surfactant. After 150 minutes of observation, the generated foam height reduced by 10%. Liquid with the presence of both silica nanoparticles and surfactant generated more stable foam with lower mobility. It can be concluded that the increase in concentration of nanosilica and addition of surfactant provided significant effects on the foam stability and mobility, which could enhance oil recovery.


Polymers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (16) ◽  
pp. 2606
Author(s):  
Hossein Saberi ◽  
Ehsan Esmaeilnezhad ◽  
Hyoung Jin Choi

Polymer flooding is an important enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method with high performance which is acceptable and applicable on a field scale but should first be evaluated through lab-scale experiments or simulation tools. Artificial intelligence techniques are strong simulation tools which can be used to evaluate the performance of polymer flooding operation. In this study, the main parameters of polymer flooding were selected as input parameters of models and collected from the literature, including: polymer concentration, salt concentration, rock type, initial oil saturation, porosity, permeability, pore volume flooding, temperature, API gravity, molecular weight of the polymer, and salinity. After that, multilayer perceptron (MLP), radial basis function, and fuzzy neural networks such as the adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system were adopted to estimate the output EOR performance. The MLP neural network had a very high ability for prediction, with statistical parameters of R2 = 0.9990 and RMSE = 0.0002. Therefore, the proposed model can significantly help engineers to select the proper EOR methods and API gravity, salinity, permeability, porosity, and salt concentration have the greatest impact on the polymer flooding performance.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 186
Author(s):  
Yukie Tanino ◽  
Amer Syed

We designed a hands-on laboratory exercise to demonstrate why injecting an aqueous polymer solution into an oil reservoir (commonly known as “polymer flooding”) enhances oil production. Students are split into three groups of two to three. Each group is assigned to a packed Hele–Shaw cell pre-saturated with oil, our laboratory model of an oil reservoir, and is given an aqueous solution of known polymer concentration to inject into the model reservoir to “push” the oil out. At selected intervals, students record the oil produced, take photos of the cell using their smartphones, and demarcate the invading polymer front on an acetate sheet. There is ample time for students to observe the experiments of other groups and compare the different flow patterns that arise from different polymer concentrations. Students share their results with other groups at the end of the session, which require effective data presentation and communication. Both the in-session tasks and data sharing require team work. While this experiment was designed for a course on Enhanced Oil Recovery for final year undergraduate and MSc students in petroleum engineering, it can be readily adapted to courses on groundwater hydrology or subsurface transport by selecting different test fluids.


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