Comparative Study of Green and Synthetic Polymers for Enhanced Oil Recovery

Several publications by authors in the field of petrochemical engineering have examined the use of chemically enhanced oil recovery (CEOR) technology, with a specific interest in polymer flooding. Most observations thus far in this field have been based on the application of certain chemicals and/or physical properties within this technique regarding the production of 50–60% trapped (residual) oil in a reservoir. However, there is limited information within the literature about the combined effects of this process on whole properties (physical and chemical). Accordingly, in this work, we present a clear distinction between the use of xanthan gum (XG) and hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) as a polymer flood, serving as a background for future studies. XG and HPAM have been chosen for this study because of their wide acceptance in relation to EOR processes. To this degree, the combined effect of a polymer’s rheological properties, retention, inaccessible pore volume (PV), permeability reduction, polymer mobility, the effects of salinity and temperature, and costs are all investigated in this study. Further, the generic screening and design criteria for a polymer flood with emphasis on XG and HPAM are explained. Finally, a comparative study on the conditions for laboratory (experimental), pilot-scale, and field-scale application is presented.

The Optimization of a Centrifugal Impeller Based on a New Multi-Objective Evolutionary Strategy

Centrifugal compressors with high aerodynamic performance are widely used in turbochargers, aero-engines and petrochemical engineering. The impeller is the core component and plays a key role in determining the compressor performance. This paper reports the optimisation of the aerodynamic performance of an industrial centrifugal impeller by a multi-objective evolutionary strategy. Firstly the 3-D modeling method for parameterisation of impeller’s geometry was described. Secondly the traditional NSGA-II method was modified to improve its ability and efficiency. Employed CFD code was first validated using the experimental data of an existing impeller. The optimisation was applied to the industrial centrifugal impeller through a two-step optimization process to allow for significant variations of the impeller geometry and speedy finding of the optimum. The optimisation was completed within 53 hours on a workstation with two 24-core processors (Xeon(R) E5-2670 v3 2.3GHz). The results indicated that the isentropic efficiency of the impeller increased by 5.3 percents and the total pressure ratio by 20.5 percents at design condition.