An experimental study on retention characteristics under two-phase flow considering oil saturation in polymer flooding

Hyunsang Yoo; Hosang Kim; Wonmo Sung; Jeonghwan Lee

Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Vol.87, 120-129, July, 2020

DOI10.1016/j.jiec.2020.03.022 Export Citation

An experimental study on retention characteristics under two-phase flow considering oil saturation in polymer flooding

Hyunsang Yoo, Hosang Kim, Wonmo Sung^{1, †}, and Jeonghwan Lee^†

Department of Energy and Resources Engineering, College of Engineering, Chonnam National University, 77 Yongbong-ro, Buk-gu, Gwangju, 61186, Republic of Korea
¹Department of Earth Resources and Environmental Engineering, Hanyang University, 222 Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul 04763, Republic of Korea

E-mail:,

This study presents experimental results on polymer retention under two-phase flow considering oil saturation. To analyze polymer retention in porous media, core flooding experiments were conducted using unconsolidated cores without clay minerals. From the results, the presence of oil in cores showed an increase in the polymer retention values (from approximately 17 to 25 μg/g). Parametric experiments were performed to investigate the retention characteristics by varying the polymer concentration and injection rate. When the polymer concentration was increased from 500 to 2000 ppm, the polymer retention values increased owing to interference between the polymer molecular chains; however, the delay factor decreased from 0.184 to 0.135. This indicates that the slug size of the polymer affects the delay factor because more additional polymer volume could be required when a lower concentration of polymer is used. Owing to the hydrodynamic force, the delay factor was increased by more than ten times when the polymer injection rate was increased. This implies that increasing the polymer slug size should be considered for maintaining the sweep efficiency in polymer flooding. Therefore, polymer injection rate is a more sensitive parameter than polymer concentration for designing the injection conditions in polymer flooding.

Keywords:Polymer flooding;Retention characteristics;Delay factor;Oil saturation;Disproportionate permeability reduction

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