Evaluation of A Thermal-Responsible Preformed Particle Gel for Conformance Control

Abstract

Preformed Particle Gels (PPG) have been injected into mature oil reservoirs as a conformance control agent to decrease reservoir heterogeneity and thus improve sweep efficiencies during water injection for reduced water production and enhanced oil recovery. The ultimate purpose of this research paper is to evaluate the transport of a thermal responsible of two kind of preformed particle gels developed in the laboratory. A series of laboratory tests was conducted to evaluate the swelling and deswelling capacities of PPG’s at various temperatures and brine concentration. The results confirmed that PPG swelling capacity increases with temperature but decreases with salinity.

It included a series of filtration tests on swollen gel particles. PPG solutions of 0.4% wt. can easily pass through a ceramic disk with permeability of rang greater than 500 millidarcy. This research study used a sand pack model and sandstone cores to evaluate the effect of flow rate and injection pressure on PPG resistance factor and residual resistance factor. Contrary to common understanding, experiential results have shown that the particle gel flow resistance factor decrease as flow rate increases. The injecting pressure and gel flow residual resistance factor increase continuously with the increasing in the amount of injected PPG.

The new PPG products is a fluid –diverting agent designed to improve the conformance control process in deep water zones of the reservoirs and to overcome some problem that could be faced when using the regular gelation systems.