Polymer Gels Made with Functionalized Organo-Silica Nanomaterials for Conformance Control

Bahador Najafiazar, Dag Wessel-Berg, Per Eirik Bergmo, Christian Rone Simon, Juan Yang, Ole Torsæter and Torleif Holt
Additional contact information
Bahador Najafiazar: Deptment of Geoscience and Petroleum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7031 Trondheim, Norway
Dag Wessel-Berg: Deptment of Mathematical Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7034 Trondheim, Norway
Per Eirik Bergmo: Petroleum Department, SINTEF Industry, 7031 Trondheim, Norway
Christian Rone Simon: Materials and Nanotechnology Department, SINTEF Industry, 0373 Oslo, Norway
Juan Yang: Materials and Nanotechnology Department, SINTEF Industry, 0373 Oslo, Norway
Ole Torsæter: Deptment of Geoscience and Petroleum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7031 Trondheim, Norway
Torleif Holt: Petroleum Department, SINTEF Industry, 7031 Trondheim, Norway

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 19, 1-28

Abstract: Deep placement of gel in waterflooded hydrocarbon reservoirs may block channels with high water flow and may divert the water into other parts of the reservoir, resulting in higher oil production. In order to get the gel constituents to the right reservoir depths, a delay in the gelling time in the order of weeks at elevated temperatures will be necessary. In this work, a methodology for controlled gelation of partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide using hybrid nanomaterials with functional groups as cross-linkers was developed. Two delay mechanisms with hybrid materials and polyelectrolyte complexes were designed and tested. Both mechanisms could significantly delay the gelation rate, giving gelling times ranging from several days to several weeks in synthetic sea water at 80 °C. Gelling experiments in sandstone cores showed that gel strength increased with aging time. For long aging times, strong gels were formed which resulted in almost no water permeability. A series of coreflooding experiments with polymer and deactivated nanomaterial were performed. In addition to differential pressures and concentration profiles, the experiments enabled calculation of retention and inaccessible pore volumes. A novel numerical model of 1D two-phase flow has been developed and tested with results from core flooding experiments. The model can track the age distribution and concentrations of the nanomaterial (and therefore water viscosity) throughout the porous medium at every time step. The model generated a good fit of experimental results.

Keywords: functional nanomaterials; porous media; enhanced oil recovery; delayed gelation; polyelectrolyte complexes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/19/3758/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/19/3758/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:19:p:3758-:d:272501

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().