Flow Behavior and Viscous-Oil-Microdisplacement Characteristics of Hydrophobically Modified Partially Hydrolyzed Polyacrylamide in a Repeatable Quantitative Visualization Micromodel

Abstract

Summary To profoundly investigate the flow behavior and viscous-oil-microdisplacement characteristics of hydrophobically modified partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamides (HMHPAMs) as well as the effect of associating monomer content on those behaviors and characteristics, compared with partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM), the flow experiments through three serial mounted flat-sand-inclusion micromodels and the viscous-oil-microdisplacement experiments in both homogeneous and interstratified connected heterogeneous repeatable quantitative visualization micromodels were conducted by use of a series of polymers with varied associating monomer content (0–1.0 mol%) at similar viscosity within all shear rates concerned. The results obtained from flow experiments show that the resistance factors (RFs) and residual resistance factors (RRFs) generated by HMHPAMs were noticeably higher than those of HPAM, and the RFs and RRFs exhibited significant permeability dependence and increased with associating monomer content. The greater RFs and RRFs for associative polymer might not be mainly caused by polymer adsorption or retention but mostly caused by increasing aggregate sizes. At concerned permeabilities (1.1–6.1 µm2), all injections of HMHPAMs could tend to be stable, which indicates that all HMHPAMs could propagate deep into the porous media. The viscous-oil-microdisplacement experiments regarding the visualization micromodels with varied permeabilities (and permeability contrasts) provide new insights into the viscous-oil-microdisplacement characteristics of HMHPAMs, such as the piston-like displacement and profile modification. In homogeneous models, under different permeabilities (1.1–6.1 µm2), the variations of final viscous-oil recovery first increased and then decreased as a function of increasing hydrophobe content, and the hydrophobe content of the polymer to obtain maximum oil recovery enhanced with increasing permeability. This might qualitatively indicate that a constant permeability matches an optimal content of hydrophobic groups. At permeability contrast of approximately three, the HMHPAM with lower hydrophobe content (0.2 mol%) could obtain the maximum viscous-oil recovery. In contrast, the maximum viscous-oil recovery was achieved by the HMHPAM with higher hydrophobe content (1.0 mol%) at a contrast of approximately five. The HMHPAM with higher content of hydrophobic groups is suitable for the significant heterogeneity.