Polymers for application in high temperature and high salinity reservoirs – critical review of properties and aspects to consider for laboratory screening

Abstract

A significant amount of oil resides in deep reservoirs characterized by relatively high temperature and high salinity. In such reservoirs, most available chemicals fluids for EOR have limited applicability. Even though recent effort has been dedicated to the development of high temperature polymers, there is no clear understanding of what would work best in those harsh environments. In addition, the oil and gas community is also evaluating potential applications of chemical EOR to offshore assets where similar conditions are often found. Field applications in harsh reservoirs have shown limited success in the use of polymers for improved oil recovery. Detail analysis reveals that screening of the fluids was done under ‘model’ laboratory conditions, using non-reservoir core samples and non-representative fluids. These facts have motivated research and development work towards understanding the type of polymers that may be suitable for use in high temperature and high salinity reservoirs and to determine the type of tests to use to assess their performance in a field application for use as lab screening criteria. In this paper, we provide a critical review of the available polymers for application in high temperature and high salinity reservoirs and summarize best practices for their laboratory screening though a recommended workflow.

Low Salinity Water–Polymer Flooding in Carbonate Oil Reservoirs: A Critical Review

“…Also, it is a nonionic, water-soluble, and biocompatible polymer due to the strong hydrogen bond between amide groups and water molecules. [10] Partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM), a copolymer of acrylamide and acrylic acid, is the most used polymer in EOR applications. With the chemical formula -[CH 2 CH] x (CONH 2 )-[CH 2 CH] y (COO − )-, it is obtained by partial hydrolysis of PAM.…”

“…Also, it is a nonionic, water‐soluble, and biocompatible polymer due to the strong hydrogen bond between amide groups and water molecules. [ 10 ]…”

Nuevas tecnologías de recobro químico y su aplicabilidad en yacimientos colombianos

“…Limitaciones de los polímeros HPAM. A partir de las limitaciones técnicas mencionadas, en los últimos años las investigaciones se han centrado en el desarrollo de nuevos polímeros con buen rendimiento en condiciones de alta temperatura y alta salinidad (HTHS) (Albonico & Lockhart, 1993;Thomas, 2008;Wu et al, 2014;Wu et al, 2015, Delgadillo-Aya et al, 2018Araujo & Araujo, 2018). Las nuevas tecnologías de inyección de polímeros proponen un incremento en su resistencia mediante la adición de nuevos monómeros, funcionalizaciones en HPAM (El-Hoshoudy et al, 2017) o polímeros mejorados con nano partículas (Bennetzen & Mogensen, 2014;ShamsiJazeyi et al, 2014), thermo thickening polymers (Shaefer et al, 2011) y biopolímeros (Quadri et al, 2015;Sveistrup et al, 2016), entre otras modificaciones posibles.…”