Optimum effective viscosity of polymer solution for improving heavy oil recovery

Wang, J.; Dong, Mingzhe

doi:10.1016/j.petrol.2009.05.007

Cited by 133 publications

(44 citation statements)

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“…The polymer floods with the concentrations high than the upper limit resulted in less than a proportional oil recovery increment. Consistent results have been obtained for five different heavy oils with viscosities ranging from 430 mPas to 5500 mPa.s 10 .…”

Section: Uniform Sandpack Flood Testssupporting

confidence: 77%

A Laboratory Study of Polymer Flooding for Improving Heavy Oil Recovery

Wang

Dong

2007

Canadian International Petroleum Conference

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Polymer flooding for improving sweep efficiency has been studied extensively in laboratory and tested in fields for conventional oils. From the literature, polymer flooding is not recommended for oils with viscosity higher than 200 mPa.s. Severe viscous fingering during waterflooding of heavy oil leaves a large amount of oil untouched in the reservoir. Polymer flooding could be a potential method for enhanced heavy oil recovery by improving the sweep efficiency. However, how a polymer flooding should be planned for a heavy oil reservoir to make it economically feasible has not been studied.This paper investigated the potential of polymer flooding for heavy oil reservoir using a heavy oil of 1,450 mPa.s. Tertiary polymer flooding tests were performed in both homogeneous and heterogeneous (channelled) sandpacks. Results in homogeneous sandpacks showed that there existed a viscosity range for the injected polymer solution, in which the oil recovery had an evident increase with the increase of polymer solution viscosity. When the viscosity of polymer solution was outside of this range, the increase in polymer solution viscosity resulted in only a small incremental oil recovery. It was also found that the earlier the polymer flooding was applied, the lower the polymer solution viscosity was required to have an obvious increase in tertiary oil recovery. Results in channelled sandpack tests showed that the existence of heterogeneity in porous media greatly lowered the tertiary oil recovery by polymer flooding. These laboratory results will be helpful for the planning of polymer flooding for heavy oil reservoirs.

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Section: Uniform Sandpack Flood Testssupporting

confidence: 77%

A Laboratory Study of Polymer Flooding for Improving Heavy Oil Recovery

Wang

Dong

2007

Canadian International Petroleum Conference

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“…Polymers are used to increase viscosity of aqueous phase which improves mobility ratio and form a uniform flood front to displace oil [1], [2]. It has been as a technically and commercially proven technology and it is considered as one of the most mature chemical flooding methods.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comprehensive Combination of Apparent and Shear Viscoelastic Data during Polymer Flooding for EOR Evaluations

Tahir¹,

Hincapie²,

Be³

et al. 2017

WJET

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We present a comprehensive workflow to obtain the best insights into the viscoelastic behavior of polymers. Viscoelasticity is depicted in most cases by the current commercially available polymers used for EOR applications. The phenomenon is debated to be one of the reasons for additional oil recovery during polymer flooding applications. It is somehow accepted that polymer increases volumetric sweep efficiency owing to improved mobility ratio. Recently researches have explained that flooding polymers in porous media with elastic characteristics could recover additional oil, due to the improved microscale oil displacement (pore-scale). This study focuses on the analysis of polymer viscoelasticity based on single-phase core, sand-pack and capillary tube (CT) experiments coupled with their detailed rheological characterization, in order to evaluate polymer behavior in porous media. A combination of hydrolyzed polyacrylamides (HPAM) polymers as well as a bio polymer is presented throughout this evaluation. The evaluation of the data is addressed on the basis of pressure drop across the pores, separating the shear associated pressure by the extensional thickening associated pressure. Apart from that, viscoelastic dependence of the converging-diverging geometry has been experimented. Based on the observed behavior through porous media, HPAM polymers are compared with bio polymers. Moreover, the behavior of solutions with induced mechanical degradation (pre-sheared) is compared with nonsheared solutions. Similarly, concentrations with different polymer solutions are evaluated. The results obtained in this work allow for additional understanding of polymer solutions behavior in flooding applications. Furthermore The results support the definition of optimized workflows to assess their behavior under flow through porous media. Finally this evaluation helps to describe the parameter that defines polymer viscoelastic properties.

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“…Their results showed a decrease in the mobility ratio accompanied by an increase of oil recovery from 58% to 64%. In a more recent work, Wang and Dong (2009) investigated the recovery of oils with viscosity values between 430 and 5500 cP, by means of injection of polymeric solutions with effective viscosities varying from 3.6 to 359.3 cP. The experiment was conducted using a porous cell of 7100 mD of permeability.…”

Section: Introduction Imentioning

confidence: 99%