Abstract
During the fracture stimulation of oil and gas wells, fracturing fluids are used to create fractures and transport the proppant into the fractured reservoirs. The fracturing fluid viscosity is responsible for proppant suspension, the viscosity can be increased through the incorporation of guar polymer and cross-linkers. After the fracturing operation, the fluid viscosity is decreased by breakers for efficient oil and gas recovery. Different types of enzyme breakers have been engineered and employed to reduce the fracturing fluid′s viscosity, but thermal stability remains the major constraint for the use of enzymes. The latest enzyme engineering approaches such as direct evolution and rational design, have great potential to increase the enzyme breakers’ thermostability against high temperatures of reservoirs. In this review article, we have reviewed recently advanced enzyme molecular engineering technologies and how these strategies could be used to enhance the thermostability of enzyme breakers in the upstream oil and gas industry.
Highlights
Approaches to Enhance the Thermostability of Enzyme Breakers: From Prospective of Upstream Oil and Gas Industry
Thermostability remains a challenging issue for its usage in the upstream oil industry
Enzyme engineering depends on tuning the catalytic site, changing the amino acid sequence, and altering the bond strength to increase enzyme stability for the thermostable production of enzymes through direct evolution and rational design There are a lot of recent insights in the direct evolution and rational design using machine learning
Summary
Hydraulic fracturing is the technique of fracturing rock through a pressurized fluid to enhance the productivity of hydrocarbons such as oil and gas. Increasing the viscosity of hydraulic fluid during the fracturing operation is important to generate the cracks as well as reducing the viscosity after fracturing fluid operation is highly crucial for permeability of oil and gas, which is why different types of breakers are used to reduce fracturing fluid’s viscosity, including oxidizers, enzymes, and acids. All these breakers reduce the viscosity of fluid or gel by breaking the guar polymer chains. First introduced in 1992 for lowtemperature and high-temperature fracturing applications, are bioactive polymers of amino acids that can reduce hydraulic fluid viscosity by degrading glycoside bonds of guar-based gel polymers. Abstract overview of molecular approaches breaker, created by https://biorender.com web tool. used to increase the thermostability of enzyme breaker, created by www. https://biorender.com/ web tool
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