Flow behaviors of a viscoelastic polymer solution at 3D micro pore-throat structure

Abstract

Polymers are abundantly used in oil production industry, especially in enhanced oil recovery process. The underground oil reservoir is a kind of porous media where complex microscopic geometries lead to strong shearing and extensional components. This research focuses on a novel method used to investigate the flow behaviors of hydrolyzed polyacrylamide solution at a micro pore-throat structure with a comparison with Newtonian flow of water. For polymer solution, the flow velocimetry revealed the viscoelastic flow has two main characters compared with Newtonian fluid. First, the instability or non-linearity of polymer flows led to bending and distorted streamlines. The instability of the flow is mainly caused by the growth of high stress generated in the viscoelastic polymer fluid as it accelerates and decelerates into and out from the narrow throat, respectively speaking. The second character is the back-streams at the outlet of the throat.