With the growing demand for energy, the efficient extraction of oil is critical, which is an important pillar of the global economy. Polyacrylamide (PAM) is an excellent flocculant used in water treatment. Meanwhile, due to its unique physical and chemical properties, PAM has shown extraordinary application potential in the field of oil exploitation, which has the following aspects.
If you are interested in water flocculant, please refer to: What is Polyacrylamide Used for in Water Treatment?
Polyacrylamide can be used in drilling fluids
During the drilling process, the drill bit will pass through the rock and aquifer, and the addition of polyacrylamide can play a role in lubricating, preventing stuck and damage to the drill bit, thus avoiding landslides.
Polyacrylamide plays an important role in profile control
Water production from oil wells (especially waterflood field) is a common problem in the development process, which will lead to a great decrease in exploitation efficiency. And PAM can be used as a water shutoff adjuster, which can reduce water production in the oil field and improve oil displacement efficiency. Therefore, polyacrylamide is usually injected into oil wells along with crosslinking agent and shale inhibitors to block water channels.
Polyacrylamide can be used in fracturing
Hydraulic fracturing is the process of pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals at high pressure into rock deep in the formation, opening small gaps to allow oil and gas to flow more smoothly to the wellhead. After hydraulic fracturing is maintained for a period of time, a gel breaker needs to be added to break PAM up and allow oil and gas to pass through. Then wastewater returns.
Polyacrylamide can be used in EOR
What is EOR? Let's take a look at oil recovery techniques.
In general, the use of reservoir energy to produce oil is called primary oil recovery; Secondary recovery of crude oil is the process of injecting water and gas into the reservoir to replenish energy. The use of chemical substances to improve the performance of oil, gas, water and rock to extract more oil is known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
PAM is mainly used in EOR, that is, by injecting chemicals into the formation to enhance the permeability of the reservoir, thereby improving the oil recovery.
Polyacrylamide can not only be used as a viscosifier to increase the viscosity of water, but also as a drag reducer to effectively regulate the flow ratio of water to oil in the formation. By increasing the viscosity of the water and reducing the relative permeability of the water, the flow will be forced to change direction, allowing more crude oil to flow to the production well, thus improving the efficiency of oil displacement.
Polyacrylamide can be used in oilfield wastewater treatment
Oilfield wastewater contains oil and organic matter, which usually forms a stable emulsion, causing great difficulties in water treatment and reuse. Cationic polyacrylamide (CPAM) can be used for demulsification and separation of waste oil and water, facilitating subsequent discharge or reuse.
It can be seen that polyacrylamide has shown significant advantages and broad application prospects in oilfield exploitation, including drilling fluids, profile control, fracturing and EOR. What's more, PAM is also widely used in the field of water treatment. If you have a need for industrial water treatment chemicals, please feel free to contact us.