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Development and Applications of Polymer-Based Oilfield Chemicals

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A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Chemistry".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2023) | Viewed by 11495

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Lili Yang

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Guest Editor

State Key Laboratory of Petroleum Resources and Prospecting, College of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing 102249, China
Interests: research and development of novel oilfield chemicals; application of nanomaterials and intelligent materials in oilfield chemistry; development of bio-based drilling fluid additives

Dr. Daoyi Zhu

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Guest Editor

Faculty of Petroleum, China University of Petroleum-Beijing at Karamay, Karamay 834000, China
Interests: oilfield chemistry; plugging theory and technology; low-energy processes for oil and gas recovery
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Special Issue will focus on the recent advances in the development and applications of synthetic polymers, modified natural polymers, and polymer/inorganic composites in oilfields, including drilling, fracturing, polymer flooding, conformance control, and water management, etc. Specifically, the polymer-based materials that can be used as rheology modifiers, filtration control additives, shale stabilizers, and plugging materials in drilling fluids; or that can serve as tackifiers, drag reducers in fracturing fluid, profile control and water shutoff agents in polymer flooding are preferred. Various polymer-based oilfield chemicals have been successfully developed for practical applications. However, a deep understanding and the thorough investigations of the relationship between the performance in oilfield and the polymeric composition, structure and architecture of the polymer-based chemicals and polymer/inorganic composites are desired to develop new materials for oilfield applications, especially for the extreme environment (e.g., deep well drilling), in which the thermal stability, saline tolerance are the crucial properties for polymer-based chemicals to be used in practice. In addition, to develop eco-friendly polymers for oilfield applications is an important trend in the future.

This Special Issue will cover up-to-date review and original research papers in the development of polymers for applications in oilfield.

Dr. Lili Yang
Dr. Daoyi Zhu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

oilfield chemicals
drilling fluid
oil recovery
fracturing fluid
profile control
water shutoff
polymer flooding
rheology
plugging
stabilizing

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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13 pages, 5252 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Pickering Emulsions Stabilized by Chitosan/Natural Acacia Gum Biopolymers: Effects of pH and Salt Concentrations

by Ahmad A. Adewunmi, Ahmad Mahboob, Muhammad Shahzad Kamal and Abdullah Sultan

Polymers 2022, 14(23), 5270; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym14235270 - 2 Dec 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1283

Abstract

In this study, chitosan (CT) and naturally occurring acacia gum (AG) blends were employed as emulsifiers to form a series of emulsions developed from diesel and water. Effects of pH level (3, 5, 10, and 12) and various NaCl salt concentrations (0.25–1%) on the stability, viscosity, and interfacial properties of CT-(1%)/AG-(4%) stabilized Pickering emulsions were evaluated. Bottle test experiment results showed that the stability indexes of the CT/AG emulsions were similar under acidic (3 and 5) and alkaline (10 and 12) pH media. On the other hand, the effects of various NaCl concentrations on the stability of CT-(1%)/AG-(4%) emulsion demonstrated analogous behavior throughout. From all the NaCl concentrations and pH levels examined, viscosities of this emulsion decreased drastically with the increasing shear rate, indicating pseudoplastic fluid with shear thinning characteristics of these emulsions. The viscosity of CT-(1%)/AG-(4%) emulsion increased at a low shear rate and decreased with an increasing shear rate. The presence of NaCl salt and pH change in CT/AG solutions induced a transformation in the interfacial tension (IFT) at the diesel/water interface. Accordingly, the IFT values of diesel/water in the absence of NaCl/CT/AG (without emulsifier and salt) remained fairly constant for a period of 500 s, and its average IFT value was 26.16 mN/m. In the absence of salt, the addition of an emulsifier (CT-(1%)/AG-(4%)) reduced the IFT to 16.69 mN/m. When the salt was added, the IFT values were further reduced to 12.04 mN/m. At low pH, the IFT was higher (17.1 mN/M) compared to the value of the IFT (10.8 mN/M) at high pH. The results obtained will help understand the preparation and performance of such emulsions under different conditions especially relevant to oil field applications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Applications of Polymer-Based Oilfield Chemicals)

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14 pages, 4094 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Study of a High-Temperature and High-Density Water-Based Drilling Fluid System Based on Non-sulfonated Plant Polymers

by Jiang Xu, Fu-Chang You and Shu-Sheng Zhou

Polymers 2022, 14(20), 4433; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym14204433 - 20 Oct 2022

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1818

Abstract

The environment-friendly water-based drilling fluid system developed for the petroleum development industry cannot successfully withstand temperatures up to 180 °C, and most high temperature-resistant additives with sulfonic acid groups that have been successfully applied to water-based drilling fluid are not good for environmental protection. In order to solve the above technical problems, a non-sulfonated filtrate reducer and viscosity reducer with resistance to high temperature were prepared by using humic acid, lignin and a multifunctional monomer as raw materials. In laboratory experiments, the molecular weights of the FLO-H filtrate reducer and the VR-H viscosity reducer were 5.45 × 10⁵ g/mol and 8.51 × 10³ g/mol, respectively, and all of them showed good high-temperature resistance. The API filtration loss of the bentonite-base slurry with 3.0 wt% FLO-H was only 6.2 mL, which indicated that FLO-H had a prominent reduction in filtration loss after aging at high temperature. When the dosage of VR-H was 1.0 wt%, the plastic viscosity of the water-based drilling fluid after aging at 200 °C decreased from 71 mPa·s to 55 mPa·s, which provided excellent dispersion and dilution. The high-temperature and high-density water-based drilling fluid containing the FLO-H filtrate reducer and the VR-H viscosity reducer had good suspension stability and low filtration performance at the high temperature of 200 °C, which can meet the requirements of high-temperature deep well drilling. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Applications of Polymer-Based Oilfield Chemicals)

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20 pages, 8479 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Immiscible Viscous Fingering: The Simulation of Tertiary Polymer Displacements of Viscous Oils in 2D Slab Floods

by Alan Beteta, Ken S. Sorbie and Arne Skauge

Polymers 2022, 14(19), 4159; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym14194159 - 4 Oct 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1726

Abstract

Immiscible viscous fingering in porous media occurs when a high viscosity fluid is displaced by an immiscible low viscosity fluid. This paper extends a recent development in the modelling of immiscible viscous fingering to directly simulate experimental floods where the viscosity of the aqueous displacing fluid was increased (by the addition of aqueous polymer) after a period of low viscosity water injection. This is referred to as tertiary polymer flooding, and the objective of this process is to increase the displacement of oil from the system. Experimental results from the literature showed the very surprising observation that the tertiary injection of a modest polymer viscosity could give astonishingly high incremental oil recoveries (IR) of ≥100% even for viscous oils of 7000 mPa.s. This work seeks to both explain and predict these results using recent modelling developments. For the 4 cases (µ_o/µ_w of 474 to 7000) simulated in this paper, finger patterns are in line with those observed using X-ray imaging of the sandstone slab floods. In particular, the formation of an oil bank on tertiary polymer injection is very well reproduced and the incremental oil response and water cut drops induced by the polymer are very well predicted. The simulations strongly support our earlier claim that this increase in incremental oil displacement cannot be explained solely by a viscous “extended Buckley-Leverett” (BL) linear displacement effect; referred to in the literature simply as “mobility control”. This large response is the combination of this effect (BL) along with a viscous crossflow (VX) mechanism, with the latter VX effect being the major contributor to the recovery mechanism. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Applications of Polymer-Based Oilfield Chemicals)

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12 pages, 3188 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Experimental Study on Phenol-Formaldehyde Resin Aggregates as In-Depth Conformance Control Agents Stabilized by Polymer

by Xianxing Meng, Guiqing Zhang, Jian Wu, Xiong Zhao, Lin Wang and Fang Zhang

Polymers 2022, 14(15), 3159; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym14153159 - 3 Aug 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1325

Abstract

To improve the dispersion stability of phenol-formaldehyde resin (PFR) particles in simulated oilfield injection water and their propagation ability in petroleum reservoir, a hydrophobically associating polymer (HAP) was employed as a stabilizer in this paper. The dispersion stability of PFR in the injection water was studied by measuring turbidity as a function of time. In addition, the migration property of the PFR/HAP dispersion was evaluated by both cellulose membrane filtration and sand packs-flooding experiments. The results show that HAP can stabilize the PFR dispersion prepared with the simulated injection water by forming PFR/HAP complex molecular aggregates. These aggregates can migrate in sand packs with strong flow resistance due to deformation or disaggregation of the aggregates when passing through the pore throat. Oil recovery was improved by up to 21.1% on the basis of water flooding, and the higher the concentration of PFR/HAP dispersion system, the better the oil recovery effect. Moreover, the cycle of log-jamming/dispersion of the aggregates leads to their penetrations through the bigger pores in the sand packs with a higher flow resistance than water. This process can improve the conformance of water in high permeability sand packs on a micro/macro scale and thus divert more water into low permeability sand packs. Therefore, more oil could be recovered from the low permeability sand packs. Moreover, the bigger the sand pack’s permeability ratio, the lower the oil recovery rate by waterflood, and the more the incremental oil can be recovered by the PFR/HAP flood. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Applications of Polymer-Based Oilfield Chemicals)

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Review

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41 pages, 6876 KiB

Open AccessReview

Research Progress of Elastomer Materials and Application of Elastomers in Drilling Fluid

by Lili Yang, Zhiting Ou and Guancheng Jiang

Polymers 2023, 15(4), 918; https://doi.org/10.3390/polym15040918 - 12 Feb 2023

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4236

Abstract

An elastomer is a material that undergoes large deformation under force and quickly recovers its approximate initial shape and size after withdrawing the external force. Furthermore, an elastomer can heal itself and increase volume when in contact with certain liquids. They have been widely used as sealing elements and packers in different oil drilling and development operations. With the development of drilling fluids, elastomer materials have also been gradually used as drilling fluid additives in drilling engineering practices. According to the material type classification, elastomer materials can be divided into polyurethane elastomer, epoxy elastomer, nanocomposite elastomer, rubber elastomer, etc. According to the function classification, elastomers can be divided into self-healing elastomers, expansion elastomers, etc. This paper systematically introduces the research progress of elastomer materials based on material type classification and functional classification. Combined with the requirements for drilling fluid additives in drilling fluid application practice, the application prospects of elastomer materials in drilling fluid plugging, fluid loss reduction, and lubrication are discussed. Oil-absorbing expansion and water-absorbing expansion elastomer materials, such as polyurethane, can be used as lost circulation materials, and enter the downhole to absorb water or absorb oil to expand, forming an overall high-strength elastomer to plug the leakage channel. When graphene/nano-composite material is used as a fluid loss additive, flexibility and elasticity facilitate the elastomer particles to enter the pores of the filter cake under the action of differential pressure, block a part of the larger pores, and thus, reduce the water loss, while it would not greatly change the rheology of drilling fluid. As a lubricating material, elastic graphite can form a protective film on the borehole wall, smooth the borehole wall, behaving like a scaly film, so that the sliding friction between the metal surface of the drill pipe and the casing becomes the sliding friction between the graphite flakes, thereby reducing the friction of the drilling fluid. Self-healing elastomers can be healed after being damaged by external forces, making drilling fluid technology more intelligent. The research and application of elastomer materials in the field of drilling fluid will promote the ability of drilling fluid to cope with complex formation changes, which is of great significance in the engineering development of oil and gas wells. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Development and Applications of Polymer-Based Oilfield Chemicals)

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