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Traditional polymeric microsphere has several technical advantages in enhancing oil recovery. Nevertheless, its performance in some field application is unsatisfactory due to limited blockage strength. Since the last decade, novel core-shell microsphere has been developed as the next-generation profile control agent. To understand the expansion characteristic differences between these two types of microspheres, we conduct size measurement experiments on the polymeric and core-shell microspheres, respectively. The experimental results show two main differences between them. First, the core-shell microsphere exhibits a unimodal distribution, compared to multimodal distribution of the polymeric microsphere. Second, the average diameter of the core-shell microsphere increases faster than that of the polymeric microsphere in the early stage of swelling, that is, 0–3 days. These two main differences both result from the electrostatic attraction between core-shell microspheres with different hydration degrees. Based on the experimental results, the core-shell microsphere is suitable for injection in the early stage to block the near-wellbore zone, and the polymeric microsphere is suitable for subsequent injection to block the formation away from the well. A simple mathematical model is proposed for size evolution of the polymeric and core-shell microspheres.

Polymer microsphere (PM) profile control has been attributed to improving sweep efficiency during the oil development process. The critical factors for PM conformance control are the plugging properties controlled by matching the relationship between the throat diameter and particle size and the injection parameters. A new matching relationship between the reservoir and PM based on the function of blocking rate and the ratio of throat diameter to microsphere diameter (C R) is established to choose the most appropriate PM size. The blocking rate indicates that it will get the most excellent plugging effect when C R is 0.5. The displacement experiments under different injection concentrations and other injection volumes show that the blocking rate is increased by injection concentration and finally stabilized. A similar trend is presented between the injection volume and plugging rate. The optimal injection concentration is 0.5%, and the optimal injection volume is 0.3 PV. According to the new size selection method and injection parameter optimal method, PM100 chooses to conduct field application. PM100 presents a good performance with a success rate of 37.5% and a validity period of more than 120 days, and its daily oil production rate increased 1.7 times, on average, and finally, the total oil increase is 556 t. The optimal size microsphere shows a good EOR effect, which indicates that this size selection method is reasonable.

During micro-scale tracer flow in porous media, the permeability and fluid velocity significantly affect the fluid dispersion properties of the media. However, the relationships between the dispersion coefficient, permeability, and fluid velocity in core samples are still not clearly understood. Two sets of experiments were designed to study the effects of tracer fluid flow velocity and porous medium permeability on the dispersion phenomenon in a core environment, using natural and sand-filled cores, respectively. From experimental data-fitting by a mathematical model, the relationship between the dispersion coefficient, flow velocity, and permeability was identified, allowing the analysis of the underlying mechanism behind this phenomenon. The results show that a higher volumetric flow rate and lower permeability cause a delay in the tracer breakthrough time and an increase in the dispersion coefficient. The core experimental results show that the dispersion coefficient is negatively correlated with the permeability and positively correlated with the superficial velocity. The corresponding regression equations indicate linear relations between the dispersion coefficient, core permeability, and fluid velocity, resulting from the micron scale of grain diameters in cores. The combination of high velocity and low permeability yields a large dispersion coefficient. The effects of latitudinal dispersion in porous media cannot be ignored in low-permeability cores or formations. These findings can help to improve the understanding of tracer flow in porous media, the design of injection parameters, and the interpretation of tracer concentration distribution in inter-well tracer tests.