Preparation and performance of fluorescent polyacrylamide microspheres as a profile control and tracer agent

Abstract

Polyacrylamide microspheres have been successfully used to reduce water production in reservoirs, but it is impossible to distinguish polyacrylamide microspheres from polyacrylamide that is used to enhance oil recovery and is already present in production fluids. In order to detect polyacrylamide microspheres in the reservoir produced fluid, fluorescent polyacrylamide microspheres P(AM-BA-AMCO), which fluoresce under ultraviolet irradiation, were synthesized via an inverse suspension polymerization. In order to keep the particle size distribution in a narrow range, the synthesis conditions of the polymerization were studied, including the stirring speed and the concentrations of initiator, Na 2 CO 3 , and dispersant. The bonding characteristics of microspheres were determined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The surface morphology of these microspheres was observed under ultraviolet irradiation with an inverse fluorescence microscope. A laboratory evaluation test showed that the fluorescent polymer microspheres had good water swelling capability, thus they had the ability to plug and migrate in a sand pack. The plugging rate was 99.8 % and the residual resistance coefficient was 800 after microsphere treatment in the sand pack. Furthermore, the fluorescent microspheres and their fragments were accurately detected under ultraviolet irradiation in the produced fluid, even though they had experienced extrusion and deformation in the sand pack.

Synthesis, characterization and evaluation of polyacrylamide graft starch/clay nanocomposite hydrogel system for enhanced oil recovery

“…Normally, the capacity of the gel system for water shutoff or water shutoff efficiency can be evaluated by the reduction in permeability of the sand pack after the gel treatment (Chen et al 2015;Kang et al 2015;Karimi et al 2014;Li et al 2016;You et al 2015), which is defined as:…”

Applications of Graphene and Its Derivatives in the Upstream Oil and Gas Industry: A Systematic Review

“…Therefore, these disadvantages limit their application. Carbon nanomaterials with adjustable fluorescence developed in recent years provide a new kind for tracers in oilfields [158][159][160][161][162][163][164].…”

Research on a Fractal Dimension Calculation Method for a Nano-Polymer Microspheres Dispersed System

“…Among its many application fields, oil development is one of the most important application fields ( Kawaguchi, 2000 ; Raffa et al, 2016 ; Jia et al, 2019 ) because it has many excellent properties, such as stability, rheology, and self-similarity ( Kang et al, 2015 ; Yang et al, 2017 ). Among them, oilfield researchers are most concerned with properties such as the PMs particle size and its distribution.…”