Effects of temperature and injection rates on the performance of bio-polymer drag reducing agent

Abstract

Drag reduction is a phenomenon where frictional pressure in turbulent pipeline flow has reduced and flow velocity increases with the addition of additives into pipeline. The drag force can be reduced due to the application of drag reducing agent (DRA). DRA is applied by adding small quantity of linear macromolecules into turbulent flow fluid helps to reduce the wall shear stress. However, most of the polymer used previously was from synthetic product and not environmentally friendly. This study used bio-polymer called as carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) that was extracted from coconut residue. In this study, the degradation of biopolymer as DRA is investigated under different temperature conditions with different heating period. Temperature shows a significant difference in viscosity reduction, especially when comparing the results between low and high temperature. In this research too, the DRA was injected into core samples to see the effect if the DRA is used in water injection well. From the result, it shows that some amount of DRA will clog the pores within the core samples