Mature wells in which, for a long time, water injection has been used, as a method of recovery they reach a point where the water cut increases or remains constant. thus decreasing the recovered hydrocarbon factor; This phenomenon occurs because the water injected, has preferential recordings in the porous medium, and does not reach the hydrocarbon available in other areas of the formation, in this type of deposits the injection of polyacrylamide gels, crosslinked with acetate of chromium, these gels make a plugging, in areas of high water permeability, causing the change of path of the same, as well as move the hydrocarbon in other areas of the porous medium. At present, the kinetics of gelation of this type of substances is monitored qualitatively by means of the “Syddansk” code, which analyzes its consistency and elasticity, only by observation. Although this method is practical, it is not very descriptive and depends a lot on the opinion and criteria of the observer, being little reproducible. Given this situation, and the increase in chemical recovery projects in the country, a methodology is described that describes the moment of gelation, reproducibly and without the injection of the analyst. During the gelation process, different polyacrylamide-chromium gels were monitored in relationships used in field operations, using ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, detecting a change in absorbances, of the spectra, which were analyzed to plant a kinetic model of gelation, in addition to generating the approach of a method, to identify the state of gelation based on the variation in absorbance.
Colloidal dispersion gels are one of the methodologies implemented, such as chemical recovery processes, in mature wells, their components are mainly polyacrylamide and aluminum citrate, both aqueous unlike other types of gelling, in this there is an intramolecular process, between the polymer chains and the crosslinker, generating a ball of polyacrylamide of nanometric dimensions. The usual gelling processes increase the viscosity of a fluid because of an increase in the molecular weight of the polymer, but in this case, the viscosity of the fluid decreases to the point of being close to that of the solvent, for this reason a monitoring of its gelation kinetics, in a conventional way is not possible, in view of this problem, this research implements techniques of viscoelastic characterization of fluids, to determine the loss and storage modules G′ and G″, as well as the phase angle in the time, in order to learn more about the gelling mechanism, as well as to be able to estimate a reaction speed, from the point of view of viscoelastic variables, the results obtained revealed that despite being gelling, there is a decrease in the storage modulus, to a greater extent than the loss modulus, which implies that the material loses elastic properties, that is, from solid to become a material more viscous or liquid. With this information, an equation was proposed that can be used both in the laboratory and in oil field work. In addition to being extended to fluids with similar behaviors, where the interactions between the polymeric chains and their crosslinker generate a decrease in their elastic properties.
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