Abstract
Drag or frictional force is defined as force that acts opposite to the object’s relative motion through a fluid which then will cause frictional pressure loss in the pipeline. Drag Reducing Agent (DRA) is used to solve this issue and most of the DRAs are synthetic polymers but has some environmental issues. Therefore for this study, biopolymer known as Coconut Residue (CR) is selected as the candidate to replace synthetic polymers DRA. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Nano-scale biopolymer DRA on the application of water injection system. Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) is extracted by synthesizing the cellulose extracted from CR under the alkali-catalyzed reaction using monochloroacetic acid. The synthesize process is held in controlled condition whereby the concentration of NaOH is kept at 60%wt, 60 °C temperature and the reaction time is 4 hours. For every 25 g of dried CR used, the mass of synthesized CMC yield is at an average of 23.8 g. The synthesized CMC is then grinded in controlled parameters using the ball milling machine to get the Nano-scale size. The particle size obtained from this is 43.32 Nm which is in range of Nano size. This study proved that Nano-size CMC has higher percentage of drag reduction (%DR) and flow increase (%FI) if compared to normal-size CMC when tested in high and low flow rate; 44% to 48% increase in %DR and %FI when tested in low flow rate, and 16% to 18% increase in %DR and %FI when tested in high flow rate. The success of this research shows that Nano-scale DRA can be considered to be used to have better performance in reducing drag.
Highlights
In oil and gas industry, drag typically occurs in the pathway of fluid inside the injection tubing or pipelines at high flow rate
Friction force or drag does exist in a turbulent flow of fluid in a pipeline
This issue is really critical for oil and gas industry especially during the transportation of oil and re-injection of water during water flooding, as it can cause drop in pressure and reduction of flow capacity
Summary
In oil and gas industry, drag typically occurs in the pathway of fluid inside the injection tubing or pipelines at high flow rate. Zakaria & Jasamai mentioned that drag, which is known as friction, is defined as energy that oppose to an object’s relative motion through a fluid [1]. Drag are classified as one of the major problems in oil and gas industry as the presence of drag will reduce the flow capacity and subsequently will involve in installation of more pumps as the easiest way to increase the pressure of the fluid in order to overcome the friction pressure losses is by pumping [2], and will contribute in higher operating cost. The fluid behaviors are generally classified as follow: NRe < 2100 2100< NRe < 4000
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