Description
POLYMERSCO manufactures a complete range of anionic polyacrylamide for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR).
Our products have been developed to apply a variety of conditions in the oil fields all over the world, which include:
Various molecular weights polyacrylamide and working temperature up to 85oC.
Sulfonated polyacrylamides for temperature up to 120oC.
Could be used for very high salinity brine.
POLYMERSCO team will help you to choose the most suitable polymer based on your specific conditions.
Chemical injection
The injection of various chemicals, usually as dilute solutions, has been used to aid mobility and the reduction in surface tension.
Injection of alkaline or caustic solutions into reservoirs with oil that have organic acids naturally occurring in the oil will result in the production of soap that may lower the interfacial tension enough to increase production.
Injection of a dilute solution of a water-soluble polymer to increase the viscosity of the injected water can increase the amount of oil recovered in some formations.
Dilute solutions of surfactants such as petroleum sulfonates or biosurfactants such as rhamnolipids may be injected to lower the interfacial tension or capillary pressure that impedes oil droplets from moving through a reservoir, this is analyzed in terms of the bond number, relating capillary forces to gravitational ones.
Special formulations of oil, water, and surfactant, microemulsions, can be particularly effective in reducing interfacial tension.
The application of these methods is usually limited by the cost of the chemicals and their adsorption and loss onto the rock of the oil-containing formation.
In all of these methods, the chemicals are injected into several wells and the production occurs in other nearby wells.
Polymer flooding
Polymer flooding consists in mixing long-chain polymer molecules with the injected water in order to increase the water viscosity. This method improves the vertical and areal sweep efficiency as a consequence of improving the water/oil mobility ratio.
Surfactants may be used in conjunction with polymers and hyperbranched polyglycerols; they decrease the interfacial tension between the oil and water.
This reduces the residual oil saturation and improves the macroscopic efficiency of the process.
Primary surfactants usually have co-surfactants, activity boosters, and co-solvents added to them to improve the stability of the formulation.
Caustic flooding is the addition of sodium hydroxide to injection water.
It does this by lowering the surface tension, reversing the rock wettability, emulsification of the oil, mobilization of the oil, and helping in drawing the oil out of the rock.
