Experimental study of polymer injection enhanced oil recovery in homogeneous and heterogeneous porous media using glass-type micromodels

Seyed Javad Hosseini,Jalal Foroozesh

doi:10.1007/s13202-018-0492-x

Seyed Javad Hosseini, Jalal Foroozesh

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13202-018-0492-x

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Abstract

In water flooding process, volumetric sweep efficiency and oil recovery can be enhanced using polymer to increase the viscosity of water. As a result, polymer flooding has higher recovery as compared to water flooding due to front stability and reduction of fingering problem. In this research work, a set of polymer flooding runs were carried out using glass-type micromodels. The micromodels were fabricated to have homogeneous and heterogeneous flow patterns. They were positioned horizontally and saturated with a heavy crude oil sample taken from an Iranian oil field before starting the injection. Three commercial polymers were used in this study. Whole process was photographed continuously with a high-resolution camera to monitor the displacement of polymer solution in the micromodels. As a part of this study, the effect of different parameters including polymer solution concentration, injection flow rate and heterogeneity on performance of polymer flooding was investigated. On top of the regular homogeneous and heterogeneous flow patterns used in this study, a heterogeneous flow pattern mimicking sandstone reservoirs was created based on the image of a thin section of a sandstone (outcrop) and polymer front movement was observed during injection.

Highlights

Polymer is a large molecule built up by the addition of small repeating units (Allcock et al 2003)
The results showed that using the polymer of hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM) had the best performance under test conditions (Hematpour et al 2011)
The primary objective of the undertaken series of experiments was to investigate the effect of different parameters such as polymer solution concentration, polymer type and injection flow rate on oil recovery

Summary

Introduction

Polymer is a large molecule built up by the addition of small repeating units (monomers) (Allcock et al 2003). The polymers used in the EOR process are divided into two groups of synthetic polymer and biopolymer. The unique features of each category of these polymers have caused advantage and disadvantage. Synthetic polymers have affordable prices, appropriate viscosity in fresh water and acceptable adsorption on the rock surface. The disadvantage of this type of polymer can be attributed to the sensitivity to flow rate and shear degradation. This type of polymer has low efficiency in high-salinity water. Biopolymers show excellent performance against high-salinity water and shear degradation but they can be sensitive to bacterial degradation in low-temperature reservoirs.

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