Gelling Behavior of PAM/Phenolic Crosslinked Gel and Its Profile Control in a Low-Temperature and High-Salinity Reservoir

Abstract

Gel conformance control technology is widely used in moderate and high temperature reservoirs. However, there are few studies on shallow low-temperature and high-salinity reservoirs. The difficulties are that it is difficult to crosslink at low temperatures and with poor stability at high salt concentrations. Therefore, the PHRO gel was developed, which was composed of gelatinizing agent (polyacrylamide), crosslinking agents (hexamethylenetetramine and resorcinol) and crosslinking promoting agent (oxalic acid). The PHRO could form high-strength gels in both deionized water and high-concentration salinity solutions (NaCl, KCl, CaCl2 and MgCl2). The observation of the microstructure of PHRO gel shows that a strong “stem—leaf”-shaped three-dimensional network structure is formed in deionized water, and the network structure is still intact in high-concentration salt solution. The results show that PHRO has good salt resistance properties and is suitable for conformance control of low-temperature and high-salinity reservoirs.