Application of Acrylates in Enhanced Oil Recovery - Application of Acrylates in Enhanced Oil Recovery - Open Access Pub

Currently, enhanced oil recovery (EOR) acquire increased attention to recover more residual oil trapped after the primary and secondary process in petroleum reservoirs. EOR comprise different technologies involving chemical, thermal, miscible flooding techniques. Chemical flooding by the polymer is a widely implemented method on the academic and industrial scale. In this chapter, the authors discuss polymer flooding using polyacrylates that involve hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM), hydrophobically associated polyacrylamides (HAPAM), which grafted with different vinyl monomers such as acrylic acid, methyl methacrylates, and 2-acrylamido-2-methylpropane sulfonic acid (AMPS). These polymers increase the viscosity of injected brine solutions, as a result, decrease mobility ratio and enhance sweeping efficiency, so the water act as a piston, which pushes oil in front of it, and consequently increase the recovery factor. The advantages and disadvantages of these polymers as well as comparing different flooding scenarios are reported. DOI10.14302/issn.2377-2549.jndc-19-2720 Polymer flooding is a common EOR technique, in which solutions of a high molecular weight water-soluble polymer is pumped into the reservoir in order to increase the water phase viscosity to obtain favorable mobility and minimize channeling effects, improving sweeping and displacement efficiencies 1. With the world’s attention on enhancing fossil-fuel production to satisfy national promotion and daily energy consumptions. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is of considerable academic and technological interest2. Crude oil recovery occurs through three distinct phases, firstly production results from the natural energy of the fluids and the rock decompression3, where it recovers 5 to 15% of the initial reserve. The second stage is known as secondary recovery involving the injection of fluids such as water or gas to boast and maintain the reservoir pressure, so force the oil into the wellbores of producing wells and recovery factor reach 10-20% 4, 5, 6. The last stage is combined under the name of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), which recover between 10 and 35% of additional oil and comprise thermal, miscible and chemical methods. EOR can be defined as any processes that increase oil recovery by reduction of the residual oil saturation (Sor) after primary and secondary production. Virtually, EOR technologies involve the injection of fluids not normally present in the reservoir (e.g. polymers, foams, surfactants) in order to increase oil recovery 7. Tertiary or enhanced oil recovery aims to recover the